STUDIES   IN   SEVERAL 
LITERATURES 


STUDIES   IN    SEVERAL 
LITERATURES 


BY 


HARRY  THURSTON  PECK,  Litt.  D. 


AUTHOa    OF    "the    PERSONAL   EQUATION," 
"what   is   good   ENGLISH,"    ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1909 


COPYRIGHT,  10n»,  BY 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

Pablisbed,  April,  1909 


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3 


TO 

ARTHUR  BARTLETT  MAURICE 

IN  GRATEFUL  R,ECOLLECTION 
OF  A  LONG  AND  UNBROKEN  FRIENDSHIP 


NOTE 

Se\'cral  of  the  essays  contained  in  this  book  have  ap- 
peared in  part  elscwlicre.  For  permission  to  reproduce  so 
much  of  the  material  as  is  here  retained,  acknowledgments 
arc  due  to  the  courtesy  of  Frank  A.  Munsey,  Esq.,  Messrs. 
Gehbic  and  Company  of  Philadelphia,  and  The  Cosmo- 
politan Magazine. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER                                     '  PAGE 

I  The  Odyssey .1     .      •■  S 

II  Alciphron 23 

III  Milton 45 

IV  The  Lyrics  of  Tennyson G7 

V  Longfellow 81 

^^  yi  PoE  AS  A  Story-Writer 99 

K  VII  Hawthorne  and  "  The  Scarlet  Letter"  117 

VIII  Emerson 133 

IX  Thackeray  and  "Vanity  Fair"   .      .      .  149 

X  Anthony  Trollope 165 

XI  Emile  Zola 201 

XII  Tolstoi's   "Anna    Karenina  "        .      .      .  227 

XIII  Alphonse   Daudet's   Masterpiece        .      .  211 

XIV  The  Detective  Story 257 

XV  The  Psychology  of  the  Printed  Page    .  281 


THE  ODYSSEY 


Studies  in  Several  Literatures 


THE   ODYSSEY 

It  may  be  asserted  as  a  general  truth  that  no  very 
long  poem  can  be  read  at  a  sitting  with  pleasure  and 
appreciation.  However  we  may  define  poetry,  it 
is  certainly  a  more  elevated  and  impassioned  form  of 
expression  than  prose.  It  demands  a  closer  atten- 
tion, a  more  alert  attitude  of  apprehension  on  the 
reader's  part.  Wordsworth  has  very  well  said  that 
the  end  of  poetry  is  to  produce  excitement  in  co- 
existence with  an  overbalance  of  pleasure.  But  this 
excitement,  this  tension  of  the  mind  and  of  the  emo- 
tions, can  not  be  very  long  supported  before  we  grow 
conscious  of  a  certain  strain.  The  air  becomes  too 
rarefied  for  us  to  breathe  quite  naturally.  As  soon 
as  this  occurs,  there  is  no  longer  "  an  overbalance  of 
pleasure."  We  can  not  remain  for  a  long  time  upon 
the  heights.  Our  feelings  grow  relaxed.  We  seek 
the  lower  levels  with  a  sensation  of  relief.  We  have 
been  stimulated  and  exalted ;  but  in  a  comparatively 
short  time  this  stimulation  and  exaltation  tax  us  too 
severely.  Poe,  in  one  of  his  critical  essays,  declares 
that  a  long  poem  does  not  exist,  and  he  adds  that 


4        STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

the  phrase  "  a  long  poem  "  is  simply  a  flat  contra- 
diction in  terms.  There  is  perhaps  just  one  poem  in 
the  literature  of  all  the  world  of  wliich  this  is  not 
true;  and  therefore,  to  my  mind,  this  poem  is  the 
supreme  poem,  the  noblest  example  of  the  poetic  art. 

Several  years  ago,  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie,  who  is 
always  doing  something  interesting  and  unexpected, 
gave  to  the  public  his  opinion  as  to  the  literary  and 
ethical  value  of  Homer.  Not  a  few  persons  were  in- 
clined to  mock  at  this  deliverance  and  to  recall  the 
old  maxim  that  the  cobbler  should  stick  to  his  last. 
Mr.  Carnegie,  they  said,  might  know  more  about 
iron  and  steel  than  any  other  living  man ;  but  why 
should  he  put  himself  forward  as  an  authority  on 
classical  hterature?  He  himself  would  certainly  not 
have  listened  with  much  respect  to  the  views  of 
Professor  Gildersleeve  or  the  late  Sir  Richard  Jebb 
on  the  subject  of  iron  tubing  and  steel  rails. 

To  me,  at  least,  such  criticism  seems  decidedly  un- 
fair. It  might  well  be  not  only  interesting  but  in- 
structive for  specialists  in  any  field  to  listen  to  the 
comments  of  those  whose  interests  have  lain  wholly 
outside  of  that  especial  sphere,  but  who  can  bring 
to  bear  upon  it  a  strong  and  highly  trained  intelli- 
gence, together  with  an  unbiassed  mind,  and  who, 
therefore,  can  look  at  it  through  fresh  eyes  and  from 
a  standpoint  that  w^ould  be  wholly  new.  I  should, 
for  example,  be  intensely  eager  to  hear  what  Mr. 
John  D.  Rockefeller  would  have  to  say  about  Aris- 


THE    ODYSSEY  5 

totle's  Nicomachean  Ethics,  if  he  were  to  read  thai". 
work  in  an  adequate  translation  and  ponder  it  with 
all  his  remarkably  acute  intelligence.  Again,  who 
would  not  like  to  hear  just  how  Plato's  Republi 
would  impress  the  mind  of  ex-Senator  Clark,  of  Mon- 
tana; whether  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  Liberata  would 
appeal  to  the  taste  of  IVIr.  John  Wanamaker;  or 
how  far  Matthew  Arnold's  essays  on  Culture  an^ 
Anarchy  would  have  any  attraction  for  Mr.  Charles 
M.  Schwab? 

Therefore,  what  Mr.  Carnegie  said  regarding 
Homer  is  really  to  be  considered  with  respect.  And 
Homer  was  an  ideal  choice  for  him,  because  the  su- 
preme glory  of  Homer  is  the  imaginative  quality  of 
his  poetry,  and  ]\Ir.  Carnegie  is  himself  a  man  of 
imagination.  He  has  shown  this  in  the  unusual  and 
striking  objects  to  which  he  has  devoted  a  large  part 
of  his  great  fortune.  Other  multimillionaires  have 
been  relatively  as  generous,  but  they  have  given  in 
conventional  ways,  and  therefore  will  be  forgotten 
when  Mr.  Carnegie  is  remembered.  Hence,  his  judg- 
ment on  Homer  is  to  be  regarded  seriously  and  by  no 
means  to  be  cast  aside  with  a  flippant  jest. 

Mr.  Carnegie  saw  in  Homer  nothing  to  com- 
mend or  to  admire.  He  found  the  Iliad  tiresome.  It 
was  almost  all  a  talc  of  fighting,  of  bloodshed,  and  of 
brutality — a  poem  that  could  teach  no  useful  lesson 
and  that  was  monotonous  and  dull  to  read.  In  some 
parts  of  his  criticism  IMr.  Carnegie  was  in  uncon- 


6        STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

scious  agreement  with  Socrates  and  Plato ;  but  class- 
ical scholars  would  be  likely  to  bristle  with  Indigna- 
tion on  being  told  that  the  Iliad  is  dull.  Neverthe- 
less, let  us  look  at  the  Homeric  literature  fairly,  to 
sec  whether  there  be  not  some  basis  for  the  censure ; 
and  then  let  us  consider  the  topic  with  which  we 
arc  immediately  concerned. 

In  the  first  place,  it  was  unfortunate  that  Mr. 
Carnegie  chose  to  read  the  Iliad  in  Pope's  metrical 
translation.  That  translation  was  characterised  for 
all  time  by  the  great  Hellenist,  Richard  Bentlcy, 
when  he  said  to  the  author,  with  his  usual  bluntness : 

"  A  very  pretty  poem,  Mr.  Pope,  but  you  mustn't 
call  it  Homer." 

And,  in  truth,  nothing  could  be  more  incongruous 
than  to  take  Pope's  neat,  trim,  balanced,  mincing 
lines  as  representing  the  splendid,  surging,  billowy 
hexameters  of  Homer.  It  is  like  stripping  an  ancient 
Greek  of  his  flowing  robes  and  trussing  him  up  in 
doublet  and  hose  and  pointed  shoes,  with  a  periwig 
upon  his  head,  and  a  gilt  snuff-box  in  his  hand.  If 
one  must  read  the  Iliad  in  English,  let  him  read  it  in 
the  simple,  manly  prose  of  Lang  and  Leaf.  Then 
the  flavour  of  the  original  will  not  all  be  lost. 
Matthew  Arnold's  lengthy  essay  on  translating 
Homer  contains  many  admirable  criticisms  and  sug- 
gestions ;  yet  he  seems  to  take  it  for  granted  that 
any  version  worthy  of  the  name  must  be  in  poetry. 
Just  here  is  where  he  goes  astray.     There  are  many 


THE    ODYSSEY  7 

poetical  renderings  of  Homer,  from  Chapman  to 
Clough  and  Waj;  yet  whether  these  are  in  Eng- 
hsh  ballad-metre  or  in  hexameters,  they  fail  to 
satisfy  the  mind.  If  you  translate  the  poetry  of 
Homer  into  English  verse,  it  is  certain  to  suffer 
a  sea-change  and  it  becomes  English  not  merely  in 
language  but  in  spirit.  There  are  two  features  of 
the  original  Greek,  for  instance,  one  of  which  must 
necessarily  be  sacrificed  in  the  translation.  First 
there  is  the  metrical  effect,  that  peculiar,  sinuous, 
sweeping,  rolling  movement  which  no  translation  can 
accurately  give;  and  there  is  also  what  Mr.  Arnold 
rightly  calls  "  out-of-doors  freshness,  life,  natural- 
ness, and  buoyant  rapidity."  There  is,  besides,  a 
certain  quaintness  and  simplicity  which  suggests  a 
period  when  the  world  was  young.  The  first — that  is, 
the  metrical  effect — can  to  some  extent  be  imitated 
in  English  and  in  German ;  but,  after  all,  this  is  only 
the  setting,  the  shell,  the  part  that  is  external.  Is 
it  not  better  to  sacrifice  it,  and  by  using  prose,  pre- 
serve those  other  qualities  which  arc  most  essentially 
Homeric?  Probably  even  a  rude  literal  transla- 
tion into  prose,  such  as  one  hears  in  schools  and  in 
college  classes,  does,  after  all,  bring  one  nearer  to 
the  primltiveness  of  the  Homeric  spirit  than  the  finest 
and  most  polished  paraphrases  which  a  verse-rcndcr- 
ing  affords.  One  loves  the  familiar  and  delightful 
old  friends  which  seek  to  convey  the  beautiful  Greek 
compound  words — "  the   far-darting  Apollo,"  "  the 


8         STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

shadow-casting  spear,"  "  the  much-cndiiring  Odys- 
seus," "  the  well-grcaved  Greeks,"  "  the  much-roar- 
ing sea,"  and  all  the  rest  of  that  sclioolboj  vocabu- 
lary which  wc  remember  from  our  earlier  years.  For 
the  spirit  of  the  schoolboy  and  of  the  young  bar- 
barian in  college  is,  after  all,  in  a  large  measure, 
the  spirit  of  Homer  himself  or  of  those  rhapsodes 
wliom  wc  collectively  describe  as  Homer.  Their 
world  was  a  world  of  fighting,  of  primitive  emotions, 
of  elemental  and  perfectly  transparent  craft,  of  sun- 
shine and  starshine,  and  a  sweet  smell  of  the  forests 
and  of  the  sea.  And  so,  let  us  have  our  Homer  not 
in  English  verse,  but  in  English  prose,  if  we  are  not 
to  have  it  in  Homeric  Greek.  In  this  way  we  shall 
gain  much  more  than  we  shall  lose. 

But,  apart  from  the  matter  of  translation,  is  the 
Iliad  world-literature  in  the  sense  that  it  has  in  it 
some  quality  which  will  survive  the  process  of  trans- 
lation— even  of  a  poor  translation — and  appeal  not 
merely  to  classical  scholars  or  to  cultivated  readers, 
but  to  every  human  being  who  has  a  brain  to  under- 
stand and  a  heart  to  feel?  I  should  answer  most 
emphatically  "  No,"  although  this  answer  involves 
the  rankest  kind  of  heresy.  I  am  willing  to  go  even 
further  and  to  say  that,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word, 
there  is  but  one  epic  poem  in  existence  which  meets 
the  test,  and  is  world-literature,  and  not  merely 
class-literature,  or  race-literature. 

The  Iliad,  for  instance,  is  a  splendid  monument  to 


THE    ODYSSEY  9 

the  Greek  genius.  In  parts,  it  is  fit  to  thrill  or  melt 
or  awe  the  soul  of  any  one.  Yet  this  is  true  of  parts 
alone.  As  a  whole,  Mr.  Carnegie  was  right  in  calling 
it  monotonous.  It  is  tiresome  even  if  you  read  it  in 
the  Greek  and  with  a  scholar's  knowledge  of  its  mul- 
tifarious allusions,  of  its  characters,  and  of  the 
creative,  restless  people  who  at  last  read  it  as  a  sacred 
book,  the  fountain-head  of  all  their  knowledge — a 
book  to  be  learned  by  heart  in  school,  and  quoted 
as  the  Bible  is  now  quoted.  But  the  interminable 
wrangle  of  the  gods,  the  heroism  of  heroes  who  are 
invulnerable,  the  endless  battles — one  feels  at  last 
as  if  he  had  been  hstening  to  the  banging  of  a  brazen 
kettle.  In  the  twenty-four  books  of  the  Iliad  there 
are  some  twenty  passages  that  deserve  to  be  im- 
mortal. The  rest  belong  to  the  classicist,  the  anti- 
quarian, the  philologist. 

Of  Vergil's  /Eneid  the  very  same  thing  may  be 
said.  From  Lucan's  Pharsalia  there  may  be  chosen 
bits  of  glowing  declamation  that  stir  the  blood,  with 
here  and  there  a  biting  epigram,  or  a  line  that  lives 
and  glows.  Tlie  Finnish  Kalevala  is  race-literature, 
and  so  is  the  Lu^iad  of  Camocns.  Who  but  a  French- 
man (and  how  many  Frenchmen?)  ever  read  the 
Ilcnriadc  of  Voltaire?  And  as  for  Paradise  Lost, 
it  is  an  epic  of  Puritanism,  clogged  with  seventeenth- 
century  theology,  and  made  ludicrous  at  its  climax 
by  that  preposterous  passage  where  the  devils  bowl 
the  angels  over  with  huge  cannon-balls.     Now  and 


10      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

then  some  German  scholar  will  write  an  elaborate  dis- 
sertation on  it;  but  what  foreigner  could  read  it,  and 
• — to  be  frank — how  many  English  or  Americans  have 
ever  read  more  than  stray  passages  from  its  la- 
boured pages?  So  far  as  these  poems  just  men- 
tioned have  exercised  a  world-influence,  they  are  lit- 
tle more  important  than  the  gigantic  Sanskrit  epic 
that  is  eight  times  as  long  as  both  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey  combined,  and  that  contains  a  hundred  thou- 
sand stanzas. 

The  truth  is  that  all  these  long  poems  survive 
because  they  appeal  either  to  the  pride  of  some  par- 
ticular race  or  nation,  or  because  they  are  made  the 
subject  of  special  study  by  highly  educated  persons, 
who  master  them,  or  at  any  rate  mess  in  them,  as  a 
part  of  language-training,  or  antiquities,  or  culture- 
history.  There  is  only  one  epic  which,  no  matter  how 
badly  it  may  be  translated,  can  be  read  spontane- 
ously, for  the  pure  pleasure  of  it,  and  which  has  gone 
beyond  the  limits  of  nation  and  of  race,  and  down 
below  the  stratum  of  the  cultivated,  and  made  its 
way  by  a  thousand  channels  into  the  knowledge  of 
men  and  women  of  ordinary  intelligence,  and  even 
into  the  prattle  of  children  in  the  nursery.  This  is 
the  Odyssey  ascribed  to  Homer ;  and  I  am  sure  that 
had  Mr.  Carnegie  read  it  as  a  whole  in  the  fine  Eng- 
lish prose  of  Professor  Butcher  and  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang,  he  would  have  pronounced  a  very  different 
verdict  upon  Homer. 


THE    ODYSSEY  11 

The  Odyssey  is  the  one  epic  that  has  possessed 
and  still  possesses  a  fascination  for  the  peoples  of 
every  age  and  every  race  since  it  was  first  completed. 
It  is  the  only  epic  poem  of  which  this  is  true,  and  it 
is,  therefore,  the  greatest  epic  in  all  literature.  I 
would  venture  to  go  still  further  and  to  pronounce 
it  the  most  wonderful  and  beautiful  single  poem 
of  which  mankind  has  any  knowledge.  If  we  disre- 
gard the  fact  that  it  is  in  verse  and  not  in  prose, 
we  may  say  that  it  is  the  finest  novel,  the  most 
stirring  romance,  that  ever  has  been  written.  Be- 
cause it  was  essentially  a  novel,  the  Greeks  were  very 
late  in  evolving  prose  fiction.     They  did  not  need  it. 

For  our  present  purpose  we  need  not  consider  when 
or  how  it  came  into  existence;  whether  it  was  the 
work  of  a  single  brain  or  of  many ;  whether  it  repre- 
sents a  growth  in  which  a  multitude  of  legends  sloAvly 
grouped  themselves  about  a  central  theme  and  be- 
came blended  into  a  seamless  unity ;  or  whether  this 
process  was  hastened  and  made  perfect  by  the  genius 
of  a  great  master  of  his  art.  Let  us  take  the  poem 
as  it  is,  and  be  content  to  see  in  it  a  rare  combina- 
tion of  the  most  primitive  fancy  with  the  sure  touch 
and  exquisite  skill  of  the  supreme  artist.  Ein])()dicd 
in  the  Odyssey  is  every  kind  of  legend  and  tradition 
ihixi  floated  down,  detached  and  isolated,  in  the  great 
stream  of  folk-lore.  These  stories  belong  to  tlie  child- 
hood of  the  human  race,  and  are  rich  with  that  glori- 
ous   imagination    whose   warmth   had   not   yet   been 


lii       STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

clilllcd  by  the  sophisticated  knowledge  of  civilisa- 
tion. Tlie  rainbow  hues  of  fancy  irradiate  these 
charming  talcs,  which  are  not  Greek  alone,  but  the 
inherited  treasures  of  humanity  over  all  the  world. 

Thus,  the  adventure  with  the  Cyclops,  when  the 
huge  one-eyed  giant  is  blinded  by  Odysseus,  can  be 
found  in  the  legends  of  the  Basques  and  Celts.  The 
bag  of  yEolus,  which  held  all  the  winds  save  one,  is 
familiar  in  the  folk-tales  of  the  Lapps  and  Finns. 
The  beautiful  enchantress  Circe,  who  changes  the 
sailors  of  Odysseus  into  swine, -was  known  centuries 
ago  to  the  story-tellers  of  India.  The  descent  into 
hell,  which  Vergil  borrowed  from  the  Odyssey,  and 
which  Dante,  in  turn,  borrowed  from  Vergil,  is  a 
theme  of  fiction  so  widespread  as  to  occur  among 
the  Finns  and  even  among  the  savages  of  Polynesia. 
The  Sirens,  who  by  their  sweet  songs  could  charm  the 
passing  mariners  and  draw  them  on  the  rocks,  were 
invented  by  sailors  perhaps  a  hundred  centuries 
ago.  The  towering  cliffs  which  clashed  together  and 
destroyed  the  ships  that  sailed  between  them  made 
a  fearsome  fable  for  the  Aztecs,  back  in  the  mists  of 
time,  while  still  the  Greeks  were  but  a  young  people. 
In  a  word,  the  Odyssey  contains  a  mass  of  curious, 
primeval,  universal  myth.  It  is  the  wonder-book  of 
the  whole  world. 

But  all  these  myths  and  fables  and  traditions  are 
not  thrown  together  loosely  so  that  they  are  only  a 
string  of  episodes  quite  unrelated  to  each  other,  like 


THE    ODYSSEY  13 

the  stories  in  the  Arabian  Nights,  for  instance.  They 
are  strands  which  some  one  carefull}^  selected  and 
with  consummate  ingenuity  wove  together  into  a 
fabric  that  is  artistically  one.  The  plot  of  the 
Odyssey  is  a  marvel  of  construction.  It  is  worlced  out 
in  such  a  wa}^  that  no  part  of  the  poem  can  be  de- 
tached. The  bits  of  legend,  whatever  may  have  been 
their  origin,  are  closely  linked  with  the  one  absorb- 
ing theme  of  the  return  of  Odysseus,  and  they  are  so 
treated  as  to  give  infinite  variety,  while  never  for  a 
moment  letting  our  attention  wander  from  the  plot. 
Here,  then,  are  at  once  diversity  and  unity  and 
artistry  combined.  Out  of  all  the  epics  that  we 
know,  the  Odyssey  alone  compels  attention  from  the 
first  line  to  the  last.  It  appeals  to  curiosity,  to  im- 
agination, to  humour,  to  pity,  and  in  some  of  its  great 
passages,  to  our  sense  of  the  sublime.  The  nature 
of  the  Odyssey  explains  why  Poe's  dictum  that  "  a 
long  poem  docs  not  exist "  is  untrue  of  this  one 
great  epic.  The  strain,  the  mental  elation,  Avhich 
characterise  other  long  poems  fatigue  the  reader's 
mind  because  the  poet  calls  only  one  set  of  emo- 
tions into  play.  Poe  seems  to  think  that  only  the 
sublime  and  the  passionate  have  place  in  poetry. 
He  docs  not  remember  that  pity,  curiosity,  and  even 
humour  may  also  enter  in.  The  principle  of  variety 
is  a  most  important  one;  but  no  epic  poet  other 
than  Ilomcr  has  made  use  of  it  to  the  very  full. 
Milton,   for  example,  descends   from  his  sublimities 


14      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

to  indulge  in  platitudes.  Homer  passes  from  his 
sublimities  to  different,  but  no  less  unfailing,  sources 
of  emotion.  The  reader's  mind,  therefore,  is  rested 
not  by  bathing  itself  in  dulness  nor  by  putting  the 
book  aside  altogether  for  a  time.  It  passes  by  a 
natural  and  easy  transition  from  sublimity  to  beauty, 
from  beauty  to  pathos,  from  pathos  to  expectancy, 
from  expectancy  to  pleasurable  entertainment,  or 
to  some  climax  which  again  raises  it  to  the  heights. 
Thus  the  Odyssey  properly  observes  Wordsworth's 
principle  of  "  an  overbalance  of  pleasure." 

The  ultimate  reason  why  the  Odyssey  has  achieved 
the  sort  of  immortality  which  no  other  epic  poem 
ever  won  is  found,  I  think,  in  the  great  prominence 
which  it  gives  to  the  purely  human  element.  The 
gods,  instead  of  being  always  thrust  before  us,  are 
seen  only,  as  it  were,  hovering  in  the  background ; 
and  it  is  the  fate  of  men  and  women  with  which  we 
are  first  of  all  concerned.  Odysseus  himself,  the  hero 
of  the  poem,  though  he  is  a  great  warrior  and  wise 
above  all  other  men,  is  not  always  void  of  fear,  any 
more  than  he  is  always  free  from  folly.  He  has  mo- 
ments of  weakness  and  unwisdom,  like  any  man.  He 
dreads  the  perils  of  an  unknown  shore.  He  yields 
to  the  fascination  of  Calypso.  He  rashly  runs  un- 
necessary risks  when  he  makes  his  visit  to  the  Cyclops, 
and  thereby  is  forced  to  wander  over  sea  and  land 
for  two  long  years.  But  his  courage  and  his  wisdom 
pull  him  through  at  last,  and  the  climax  of  the  poem 


THE    ODYSSEY  15 

makes  us  thrill  at  the  triumph  of  manhood  over  every 
obstacle. 

And  two  women  in  the  book  are  wonderfully  true. 
Penelope,  the  loyal  wife  of  Odysseus,  beset  by  wooers, 
not  knowing  surely  that  her  husband  still  survives — 
she  is  the  type  for  all  time  of  constancy  and  truth, 
of  devotion  to  the  man  to  whom  her  entire  heart  is 
given.  What  shall  we  say  of  Nausicaa,  the  island 
maiden?  She  was  first  drawn  for  us  almost  three 
thousand  years  ago,  yet  she  is  as  winsome  and  as 
sweet  as  though  we  had  just  met  her  playing  tennis. 
This  island  princess,  the  daughter  of  a  rich  and 
luxurious  king,  still  goes  with  her  companions  to 
wash  her  garments  in  a  little  stream,  and  to  romp 
with  her  attendant  maidens.  She  blushes  when  she 
comes  upon  the  shipwrecked  Odysseus,  and  will  not 
lierself  guide  him  to  the  palace  through  the  city 
streets,  lest  people  should  gossip  and  say,  "  Where 
did  she  pick  him  up?'*  (~oo  8e  jxcv  ehpe;)  Nau- 
sicaa is  a  genuine  girl,  with  all  a  young  girl's  mod- 
esty and  sweetness  and  naivete.  Slie  and  Chrysoth- 
cmis,  in  the  Electra  of  Sophocies,  are  the  only  two 
genuine  girls  In  all  Greek  literature — Nausicaa,  a 
frank,  lovable,  .-md  sensible  young  creature,  and 
Chrysothcmis  just  the  least  bit  pert.  Chrysothemis, 
in  fact,  is  a  good  example  of  the  shallow  young  girl 
who  likes  gaiety  and  does  not  very  much  trouble 
herself  about  the  deeper  things  of  life.  In  the  play 
of  Sophocles,  she  can  not  understand  why  her  sister 


IG      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Elcctra  should  ^o  moping  about,  creating  an  at- 
mosplicrc  of  unhiippincss  and  discontent.  To  be 
sure,  there  was  some  sort  of  scandal  back  in  the  past 
about  her  mother's  marriage  with  her  stepfather ; 
but  why  keep  brooding  over  this  forever?  She 
would  like  to  have  the  palace  done  over  and  to  re- 
sume the  usual  festivities  and  entertainments.  When 
Elcctra  rebukes  her,  Chrysothemis  is  just  a  little 
bit  cattish  in  her  sharp  replies.  On  the  other  hand, 
Nausicaa  has  a  deeper,  more  affectionate,  and  stead- 
fast nature.  Once  I  happened  to  speak  of  these  two 
dainty  little  Greeks  to  a  very  accomplished  classical 
scholar,  and  he  remarked  laughingly: 

"  Yes,  I'm  sure  that  Chrysothemis  wore  side- 
combs." 

He  would  scarcely  have  said  this  in  a  public  lec- 
ture on  Greek  literature,  and  yet  it  expresses  abso- 
lutely the  feeling  that  one  has  on  first  reading  the 
few  lines  in  which  a  master  of  psychology  has  given 
us  a  bit  of  everlasting  human  nature. 

About  Nausicaa,  Charles  Dudley  Warner  wrote 
that  "  nothing  is  more  enduring  in  literature  than 
this  girl."  And  he  goes  on  to  make  some  general  re- 
marks which  seem  to  me  peculiarly  appropriate  to  the 
Odyssey  as  a  whole.  "  All  the  elements  of  the  picture 
are  simple,  human,  natural,  standing  in  as  uncon- 
fused  relation  as  any  events  in  common  life."  Here, 
indeed,  we  find  "  the  true  realism  that  is  touched  with 
the  ideality  of  genius,"  and  this  is  "  the  immortal 


THE    ODYSSEY  17 

elemeift  in  literature."  For  the  highest  genius  is 
marked  first  of  all  by  a  beautiful  simplicity,  a  quality 
which  appeals  to  the  universal  understanding,  gener- 
ation after  generation,  and  age  after  age.  This 
realism  touched  with  ideality,  this  natural  and  simple 
and  human  element,  are  what  make  the  Odyssey  the 
first  of  epics,  inimitable  and  unapproachable. 

It  is  in  the  climax  of  the  book  that  the  human  in- 
terest of  the  poem  is  most  sharply  and  surely  felt. 
Odysseus  has  wandered  for  ten  weary  years,  seeking 
to  reach  his  home  in  Ithaca,  and  always  beaten  back 
by  the  curse  of  Poseidon,  which  leads  him  through  a 
strange  and  striking  series  of  adventures.  In  his  ab- 
sence, and  because  he  is  thought  to  be  long  since 
dead,  a  swarm  of  suitors  throng  the  palace,  where  his 
wife  still  hopes  for  his  return.  They  are  eager,  lust- 
ful, arrogant  young  nobles  who  browbeat  the  aged 
father  of  Odysseus,  quarter  themselves  upon  the  ab- 
sent king's  domain,  cat  and  drink  at  his  table,  waste 
his  possessions,  and  make  loose  love  to  the  maidens 
who  wait  upon  the  queen,  Penelope. 

When,  at  last,  Odysseus  comes,  it  is  in  the  guise 
of  a  beggar,  mean  and  squalid  in  appearance.  His 
anger  blazes  hotly  in  his  heart  at  what  he  hears  and 
sees ;  but  he  is  wise,  and  he  stays  his  hand  until  his 
vengeance  shall  be  the  more  tremendous.  His  aged 
father  does  not  recognise  him,  nor  even  his  wife  who 
loves  him.  His  old  hounrl,  Argos,  alone  remembers 
the  lord  and  king  of  Ithaca.     Then  comes  the  mo- 


18      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

nient  when  the  suitors  arc  lolling  over  the  wine-cups, 
and  they  mock  the  beggar-man.  The  great  bow  of 
King  Odysseus  is  brought  forth,  and  one  after  an- 
other the  jeering  youths  essay  to  bend  it,  but  their 
strength  is  not  sufficient.  At  last  the  beggar  takes 
it  in  his  hands,  and  looks  down  upon  the  wanton 
revellers  who  have  robbed  him  and  would  have  dis- 
honoured him.  And  as  he  looks,  the  meanness  of  the 
beggar  gives  way  to  the  majesty  of  the  monarch. 
He  towers  above  them  with  blazing  eyes,  and. with 
all  the  glory  of  triumphant  and  avenging  power. 
The  doors  of  the  great  hall  are  barred,  and  a  peal 
of  thunder  shakes  the  heaven.  Odysseus  calls  to  his 
son,  Telemachus,  and  "  Telemachus  girt  his  sharp 
sword  about  him,  and  took  his  spear  in  his  grasp, 
and  stood  fast  by  his  father's  side,  all  armed  \vith 
gleaming  bronze,  while  Odysseus  stripped  himself  of 
his  rags  and  leaped  upon  the  threshold,  and  poured 
out  the  swift  arrows  there  before  his  feet." 

It  is  superb — this  vengeance  of  a  king,  who,  re- 
turning home,  stands  forth  magnificent  in  his  just 
rage,  and  bends  the  mighty  bow  and  slays  with  his 
shafts  those  who  have  insulted  him  and  who  have 
dared  to  treat  his  wife  with  less  than  honour.  The 
story  stirs  the  blood,  whether  we  read  it  in  the  splen- 
did, rolling  measure  of  the  Greek  or  in  one  of  the 
many  translations.  It  plays  upon  the  elemental 
primitive  emotions,  and  therefore  it  is  a  poem  written 
for  all  time. 


THE    ODYSSEY  19 

Alone  among  epic  poems,  the  Odyssey,  as  I  have 
said,  has  entered  not  merely  into  every  form  of  later 
romance,  but  into  the  common  speech  of  man.  We 
find  it  largely  drawn  upon  by  Vergil  in  the  greatest 
Latin  epic,  just  as  we  find  fragments  of  its  fine  gold 
scattered  through  the  works  of  modern  writers — the 
poetry  of  Tennyson,  for  example,  or  the  child-prose 
of  Hawthorne.  So  it  is  that  even  those  who  never 
read  the  Odyssey  have  come  to  possess  at  least  a 
little  of  its  treasure ;  for  there  are  few  who  have  not 
heard  of  the  Sirens  and  of  "  Cimmerian  darlcness," 
and  of  Circe,  of  the  Cyclops,  of  Penelope's  web,  and 
of  the  lotus-eaters. 

The  Odyssey  has  for  its  very  heart  tlie  home  toward 
which  the  hero  is  ever  striving.  It  is  a  poem  of  the 
sea — the  wonderful  sea  in  whose  enchanted  isles  are 
dreams  of  loveliness  and  also  dangers  that  appal. 
It  has  all  the  magic  and  the  mystery  of  the  ocean 
— its  endless  fascination,  the  radiance  of  its  sun- 
lit waves,  and  the  stern  grandeur  of  its  tempests. 
Thus,  unlike  any  other  epic,  its  music  is  infinitely 
varied ;  yet  underncatli  it  are  always — so  that  it  may 
be  truly  epic  in  its  power — the  "  surge  and  thunder  " 
whose  deep  tones  haunt  the  ear  and  reach  at  last  the 
very  soul  of  him  who  reads. 


ALCIPHRON 


n 

ALCIPHRON 

Ix  just  what  way  do  men  and  women  look  on  life? 
Year  succeeds  year,  and  decade  follows  after  decade ; 
and  In  this  swiftly  silent  gliding  on  of  time  there  is 
wrought  out  for  us  the  curious  succession  of  events 
which,  when  taken  all  together,  make  up  our  lives. 
For  it  is  by  events  and  experiences,  and  not  by  years, 
that  we  measure  our  existence  and  decide  in  retro- 
spect whether  we  have  been  happy  or  unhappy. 
The  successes  and  the  failures,  the  opportunities  and 
the  limitations,  the  friendships  and  the  enmities,  the 
periods  of  intellectual  growth  and  those  of  intel- 
lectual deterioration,  the  hours  of  contentment  and 
the  moments  of  passionate  revolt  or  exaltation — these 
times,  these  episodes,  are  woven  together  into  that 
multicoloured,  blurred,  uneven  fabric  of  personal  ex- 
y)cricnce  which  each  of  us  calls  life.  Every  human 
being,  indeed,  is  living  a  realistic  novel  whereof  he  is 
himself  in  his  own  belief  the  central  figure,  the  person 
of  supreme  importance;  and  so  he  interprets  every 
incident  according  to  its  relation  to  his  personal 
concerns. 

Naturally,  then,  he  looks  upon  these  incidents  from 
a  special  angle — the  angle  of  self — and  he  seldom 

23 


24      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

pauses  to  reflect  that  every  other  character  in  the 
story  is  looking  upon  the  same  episodes  from  quite 
a  different  angle,  and  that  each  one  is  equally  con- 
vinced that  he  or  she  is  the  true  hero,  or  the  heroine. 
And  as  each  vicwb  the  whole  with  a  vision  and  a 
knowledge  that  are  necessarily  restricted,  it  follows 
that  the  entire  plot,  the  completed  scheme,  is  actually 
and  fully  known  to  none,  but  that  each  sees  some- 
thing which  the  rest  do  not,  and  that  each  must  also 
be  quite  ignorant  of  that  which  many  of  the  others 
know. 

Such  are  the  inevitable  conditions  of  human  life; 
and  therefore  life  is  something  to  which  no  person 
holds  the  key,  not  even  the  key  to  his  own  small 
tour  d'ivoire.  In  summing  up  the  story  of  a  life,  the 
only  things  of  which  we  can  be  approximately  sure 
are  the  results,  the  concrete  and  plainly  seen  effects. 
Of  the  causes  which  have  brought  all  these  results  to 
pass,  we  are  infinitely  and  pitifully  ignorant.  We 
only  sometimes  think  we  know.  When  we  analyse 
our  basis  of  belief  we  find  it  always  crumbling  into 
dust.  Could  we  but  read  the  minds  and  search  the 
hearts  of  others,  we  might  perhaps  approach  the 
truth ;  yet  even  then  we  should  often  have  to  hesitate. 
For  who  can  be  so  absolutely  sure  concerning  his  own 
secret  soul  as  to  single  out  in  it  the  dominating  influ- 
ence which  determines  any  action,  amid  the  clash  and 
interplay  of  conflicting  motives,  each  striving  for 
the  mastery  of  will?    An  act,  which  to  the  world  at 


ALCIPHRON  25 

large  seems  noble,  may  have  its  hidden  source  in  base- 
ness. An  apparent  sacrifice  of  self  may  have  been 
prompted  by  an  egoism  of  which  the  world  knows 
nothing  and  of  which  perhaps  we  are  ourselves  not 
fully  conscious.  So,  when  it  comes  to  judging  others, 
how  utterly  incapable  is  the  very  wisest,  the  most  ex- 
perienced and  the  most  intuitive  for  such  a  task  as 
that !  Only  the  limping  devil  of  Lesage  could  give 
the  needed  clue,  or  else  some  revelation  such  as  that 
which  Maupassant's  profoundly  morbid  mind  con- 
ceived in  his  strange  fantasy,  "  La  Morte."  Each  of 
us,  in  fact,  lives  out  his  life  in  a  curious  and  almost 
dreadful  isolation,  a  supreme  and  quite  impenetrable 
ignorance  of  every  other  human  soul ;  since  every 
such  soul  is  shut  in  by  a  prison-wall  which  nothing 
can  remove.  Wisdom  can  not  shatter  it.  Faith 
can  not  surmount  it.  Immortal  love  itself,  so  radi- 
ant and  all-compelling,  finds  here  the  limit  of  its 
power,  and  beats  against  the  bars  in  vain. 

In  what  way,  then,  do  we  see  life.'*  Only  in  unre- 
lated fragments ;  never  clearly  and  as  a  whole.  Life 
is  a  volume  from  which  many  leaves  are  lost  and  of 
which  many  chapters  are  undecipherable.  lie  who 
attempts  to  read  it,  is  like  one  who  tries  to  read  a 
score  of  pages  torn  at  random  from  a  novel  and  seeks 
to  reconstruct  the  missing  parts.  lie  can  obtain  a 
partial  knowledge  of  the  characters.  He  can  get  an 
inkling  of  the  plot.  He  can  Avith  patient  ingenuity 
make  guesses  at  what  happened  in  tlie  part  wliich  he 


£6      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

has  lost,  iind  can  fancy  why  it  happened.  Yet  these 
are  only  guesses  after  all;  and  amid  them,  how  is  he 
to  know  which  one  is  right  and  which  are  absolutely 
wrong?  And  it  is  so  in  life — in  the  life  of  every  day, 
the  decorous  and  apparently  uneventful  life  which  we 
share  with  those  about  us.  You  sit  beside  some 
woman  at  a  dinner,  and  in  her  casual  talk  she  per- 
haps lets  fall  some  phrase,  some  sentence,  or  some 
opinion  which  seems  to  you  a  bit  of  quite  unconscious 
self-revelation.  It  interests  you,  and  it  makes  you 
curious  to  know  her  history.  You  form  conjectures 
and  construct  a  plausible  hypothesis.  In  time,  per- 
haps, you  hear  from  some  one  else  a  scrap  or  two  of 
gossip  which  in  part  confirms  your  theory  and  in  part 
destroys  it.  You  then  construct  another  theory  that 
will  harmonise  with  all  that  you  have  heard  and 
fancied.  And  then,  most  likely,  you  can  learn  no 
more.  You  never  see  or  hear  of  her  again.  You  have 
had  a  tantalising  half  glimpse  of  something  hidden, 
as  it  seems  to  you — and  that  is  all.  In  fact,  it  may 
be  that  there  was  no  story  and  that  you  were  alto- 
gether wrong  in  your  belief;  or  it  may  be  that  the 
story  was  very  different  from  that  which  you  im- 
agined, and  one  even  more  remarkable.  Yet,  what- 
ever the  truth  may  be,  you  will  never  know  it. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  whole  complex  structure  of 
the  life  we  see  about  us.  Often  before  your  eyes  there 
are  enacted  comedies,  the  wit  and  fun  of  which  escape 
you.      You   are   yourself   an   unconscious   actor   in 


ALCIPHRON  27 

tragedies  whoso  poignant  ngony  you  never  feel  or 
dream  of.  That  thing  which  in  jour  belief  seems 
full  of  meaning  is  in  reality  quite  meaningless ;  that 
which  you  view  as  wholly  unimportant  may  hold  the 
key  to  all  your  future.  For  we  all  wear  masks  and 
we  all  speak  with  the  smooth  mendacity  which  con- 
vention teaches  us ;  and  as  we  move  among  our  fel- 
lows, urbane  and  smiling  and  apparently  at  ease,  we 
fail  to  perceive  in  one  another  the  surging  tide  of 
quivering  hope  and  baffled  despair,  nor  do  we  note  the 
scars  which  each  of  us  conceals.  Therefore,  to  every 
one  who  lives  it,  life  is  replete  with  trivialities,  with 
coincidences  which  have  no  significance,  and  with  epi- 
sodes which  may,  indeed,  be  vital  in  their  true  relation 
to  the  whole,  but  which  to  us  are  only  casual  occur- 
rences, half  noticed  at  the  time  and  almost  instantly 
forgotten. 

It  is  odd  that  the  writers  of  modern  fiction  have 
never  fully  understood  the  truth  of  what  has  just 
been  said,  in  its  relation  to  the  theory  of  literary 
realism.  Our  so-called  realists  profess  to  give  in  what 
they  write  an  accurate  transcript,  a  perfect  repro- 
duction, an  untouched  photograph  of  life,  precisely 
as  it  is.  To  attain  this  end  they  strive  with  eager- 
ness. They  observe  minutely,  they  study  each  detail, 
they  spare  you  nothing  in  their  desire  that  not  even 
the  most  minute  particular  shall  escape  your  notice. 
They  insist  that  in  all  their  pages  you  shall  see  every- 
thing, feci  everything,  know  everything.     And  this 


2S       STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

they  say  is  realism — a  truthful  and  convincing  rep- 
lica of  life.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  wholly 
false  to  life,  and  it  is  false  precisely  in  proportion 
as  it  shows  us  all  and  tells  us  all  and  leaves  absolutely 
nothing  to  be  guessed  or  to  be  given  up  as  quite  in- 
soluble. Everything  they  show  us  has  a  meaning,  a 
definite  relation  to  the  whole;  and  when  we  read  the 
book,  we  learn  just  what  this  meaning  is  and  just 
what  is  this  relation.  In  life,  however,  we  often  miss 
the  meaning  and  do  not  even  dream  of  correlating 
half  the  facts  which  we  have  superficially  observed. 

You  can  see  the  falsity  of  the  pseudo-realistic 
method  even  in  its  minor  phases.  Zola,  for  instance, 
will  take  us  up  some  greasy  staircase,  and  as  he  leads 
us  on,  he  will  catalogue  the  odours  that  we  encounter, 
enumerating  the  source  of  each,  the  quality  of  each, 
the  effect  of  each  upon  the  sense  of  smell,  until  we 
have  a  perfect  symphony  of  stenches.  When  we 
reach  the  room  above,  he  will  again  set  forth  each 
article  of  furniture  and  every  stain  upon  the  wall. 
He  will  call  attention  to  the  broken  window-pane 
with  a  soiled  night-cap  thrust  into  the  jagged  hole; 
he  will  nudge  us,  as  it  were,  to  make  us  see  just  how 
the  battered  washstand  is  propped  against  the  wall ; 
he  will  insist  upon  the  condition  of  the  towels,  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  soapy  water  in  the  washbowl,  and  he 
will  not  pause  until  each  square  inch  of  squalor  has 
been  put  beneath  his  microscope  for  us  to  gaze  at. 
Yet  in  life  one  does  not  see  things  in  this  way.     If 


ALCIPHRON  29 

we  go  up  the  staircase  by  ourselves,  an  unpleasant 
odour  may  make  us  instinctively  recoil,  and  then 
hurry  on ;  but  we  never  stop  to  analyse  it  or  to  con- 
sider the  source  of  every  separate  and  component 
stench.  We  simply  get  a  swift  impression  of  some- 
thing which  is  repellent,  and  that  is  all.  And  when 
we  enter  a  room,  we  get  in  like  manner  an  impres- 
sion of  the  room  and  of  its  most  conspicuous  fea- 
tures, but  we  do  not  notice  every  sordid,  nauseous 
detail. 

And  in  more  important  things,  the  pseudo-realism 
makes  the  same  mistake  in  telling  us  too  much  and  in 
insisting  that  we  shall  see  everything.  Zola  and 
his  school  give  us  every  external  material  detail  reit- 
erated over  and  over  again.  Bourget  and  his  imi- 
tators let  us  into  the  innermost  secrets  of  the  brain 
so  that  we  know  their  personages  psychologically 
down  to  the  last  quiver  of  emotion  or  the  last  elusive 
turn  of  thought.  And  in  the  books  which  these 
writers  have  produced,  every  incident  fits  into  every 
other  incident  just  as  the  wheels  of  a  machine  fit  into 
the  cogs  on  wliich  they  turn.  Every  episode  has  a 
direct  and  definite  relation  to  every  other  episode, 
and  we  are  allowed  to  know  just  what  the  relation  is. 
Notliing  ]i,ij)pcns  casually,  or  without  a  definite 
meaning.  It  is  all  wrought  out  so  cunningly  and 
with  so  perfect  a  balance,  so  logical  a  sequence,  so 
inevitable  nn  issue!  The  whole  is  marvellous  as  a 
work  of  art,  yet  it  is  preposterous  as  a  bit  of  life; 


so      STUDIES    IN"    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

for  from  it  the  clement  of  the  fortuitous,  the  insig- 
nificant, and  the  irrelevant  is  utterly  excluded.  We 
admire  the  dexterity  of  the  artist  who  has  done  so 
neat  a  piece  of  literary  joiner's  work;  but  the  very 
perfection  of  his  art  removes  it  wholly  from  the 
sphere  of  truth  and  nature.  It  lacks  the  largeness 
and  the  looseness  of  the  life  we  live. 

This  fact  has  not  escaped  at  least  one  modem  nov- 
elist; or,  at  any  rate,  there  is  one  modern  novelist 
who  has  come  far  closer  to  reality.  This  is  Count 
Tolstoi,  of  whom  Matthew  Arnold  observed  with 
great  acuteness  that  he  has  not  thought  it  necessary 
to  make  the  action  in  his  novels  represent  a  unity 
towards  which  each  episode  and  incident  shall  lead 
the  reader,  and  upon  which  they  shall  all  inevitably 
converge.  Thus  in  Anna  Karen'ina  there  are  two 
distinct  and  separate  "  actions  "  (the  word  is  Mr. 
Arnold's),  or  rather  plots,  the  one  relating  to  the 
connection  of  Anna  and  Vronsky  and  the  other  to 
the  affair  of  Katia  and  Levine.  As  the  tale  devel- 
ops, we  pass  from  one  set  of  interests  to  another  with 
that  freedom  and  actual  inconsequence  which  be- 
longs to  the  haphazard  history  of  human  lives.  But 
there  is  something  more  to  be  observed,  and  Mr. 
Arnold  has  very  clearly  noted  its  significance. 

"  People  appear  in  connection  with  these  two  main  ac- 
tions whose  appearance  and  proceedings  do  not  in  the  least 
contribute  to  develop  them;  incidents  are  multiplied  which 
we  expect  are  to  lead  to  something  important,  but  which  do 


ALCIPHRON  SI 

not.  "What,  for  instance,  does  the  episode  of  Katia's  friend, 
Varinka,  and  Levine's  brother,  Serge  Ivanitch,  their  inclina- 
tion for  one  another  and  its  failure  to  come  to  anything, 
contribute  to  the  development  of  either  the  character  or 
the  fortunes  of  Katia  and  Levine?  What  does  the  incident 
of  Levine's  long  delay  in  getting  to  church  to  be  married, 
a  delay  which  as  we  read  of  it  seems  to  have  significance, 
really  import?  It  turns  out  to  import  absolutely  nothing, 
and  to  be  introduced  solely  to  give  the  author  the  pleasure 
of  telling  us  that  all  Levine's  shirts  had  been  packed  up." 

Objection  has  been  made  to  this  irrelevance  as  be- 
ing an  essential  blemish  on  a  work  of  art,  and  such, 
in  truth,  it  would  be  were  this  remarkable  book  of 
Tolstoi's  to  be  viewed  as  being  just  a  work  of  art. 
But,  as  Mr.  Arnold  afterwards  observes,  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  speak  of  Anna  Karenina  as  the  creation 
of  an  artist.  We  are  rather  to  take  it  as  a  piece 
of  life. 

"A  piece  of  life  it  is.  The  author  has  not  invented  and 
combined  it,  he  has  seen  it;  it  has  all  happened  before  his 
inward  eye,  and  it  was  in  this  wise  that  it  happened.  Le- 
vine's shirts  were  packed  up,  and  he  was  late  for  his  wed- 
ding in  consequence;  Varinka  and  Serge  Ivanitch  met  at 
Levine's  country-liouso  and  went  out  walking  together;  Serge 
was  very  near  proposing,  but  did  not.  The  author  saw  it  all 
liappening — saw  it,  and  therefore  relates  it;  and  what  his 
novel  in  this  way  loses  in  art  it  gains  in  reality." 

Just  one  other  modern  novelist  .seems  to  have  had 
an  inkling  of  what  this  method  means  and  of  its  value 
in  giving  an  accurate  impression  of  life.  Anatole 
France,  witli   all   his   grotesque  jumbling   of   mysti- 


32       STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

cisni  juul  inatcrifilism,  has  in  two  of  his  novels — 
UOrmc  du  Mail  and  Le  Mannequin  (TOsier — exhibited 
the  same  appreciation  of  the  inconsequent  and  the 
irrelevant  as  factors  of  true  realism.  Mr.  Howells 
came  very  near  doing  the  same  thing  in  his  book  enti- 
tled Letters  Home;  but  apparently  his  courage 
failed  him  and  he  felt  that  he  must  allow  at  least 
the  reader  of  the  book  to  know  the  whole  story  in 
its  completeness. 

Historically,  however,  neither  Tolstoi  nor  Anatole 
France  is  the  first  to  show  us  an  effective  example 
of  this  realism.  To  find  the  prototype  we  must  go 
back  some  seventeen  hundred  years  and  open  the 
pages  of  a  Greek  writer  who  lived  in  Athens  two 
centuries  after  Christ.  This  person  is  Alciphron,  a 
clever  and  amusing  litterateur,  who  may  be  best  de- 
scribed as  a  sort  of  Hellenic  Hugues  Le  Roux.  Prac- 
tically nothing  is  known  about  his  life  or  about  his 
personality ;  but  from  the  fiction  which  he  has  left 
us,  we  may  infer  that  he  was  an  easy-going  man  of 
the  world,  a  keen  observer,  a  student  of  human  nature 
in  all  its  phases,  and  a  very  graceful,  entertaining 
writer.  The  task  which  he  set  before  himself  was 
that  of  delineating  in  fiction  the  every-day  life  of 
his  own  time,  and  in  doing  so  to  sketch  character 
with  an  accurate  understanding  of  its  psychology. 

Very  few  persons,  very  few  classical  scholars  even, 
concern  themselves  with  the  history  of  Athens  after 
it  ceased  to  be  a  centre  of  political  power.     The 


ALCIPHRON  33 

Athens  which  one  most  readily  calls  to  mind  is  the 
Athens  of  the  Golden  Age  of  Greece — the  Athens 
which  both  in  arts  and  in  arms  was  the  supreme  glory 
of  the  Hellenic  world.  This  was  the  Athens  of  Peri- 
cles and  Plato,  of  the  great  dramatists  and  phi- 
losophers and  historians  and  poets,  the  Athens  which 
beat  back  the  Persian  hordes,  and  which,  even  in  the 
death-throes  of  its  independence,  gave  to  the  world 
Demosthenes.  But  the  Athens  of  Alciphron  was  a 
very  different  Athens.  Its  people  under  Roman 
rule  had  half  forgotten  the  grandeur  of  their  past 
and  were  content  to  lead  a  pleasure-loving  life,  em- 
bellished by  all  the  refined  luxury  of  the  later  Em- 
pire. The  city  was  still  a  marvel  of  architectural 
beauty,  and  its  inhabitants  were  still,  as  always,  mer- 
curial, clever,  and  intellectually  brilliant.  But  their 
genius  had  ceased  to  be  creative,  so  that  culture  and 
a  certain  polite  erudition  took  the  place  of  boldly 
original  effort.  Athens  was  the  seat  of  a  great  uni- 
versity to  which  young  Romans  and  Gauls  and 
Spaniards,  and  even  Asiatics,  repaired  in  throngs 
to  receive  a  modicum  of  that  learning  with  which  the 
name  of  Greece  is  forever  associated.  The  town  was 
very  largely  given  up  to  a  sort  of  genial  bohemian- 
ism,  so  that  it  may  be  styled  le  petit  Paris  of  ancient 
times.  The  society  of  this  Bohemia  was  a  light- 
lieartcd,  merry,  witty  one,  loose  but  not  gross  in 
morals,  and  distinguished  chiefly  by  its  perfect 
savoir  vivre,  its  easy  tolerance,  and  its  general  ap- 


31.      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

prcciatlon  of  every  one  who  showed  himself  to  be  a 
bon  enfant. 

This  was  the  society  which  Alciphron  has  drawn 
for  us  in  a  series  of  fictitious  letters  supposed  to  be 
written  by  all  sorts  of  persons  representing  pretty 
nearly  every  class — men-about-town,  adventurers, 
professional  diners-out,  gamblers,  peasants,  fisher- 
men, ingenuous  youths,  philosophers,  anxious  par- 
ents, and  ladies  of  easy  virtue.  Taken  together, 
these  letters  afford  a  curious  kaleidoscopic  view  of 
Athenian  life  as  it  was  known  to  the  general  run  of 
men  and  women  who  were  not  distinguished,  who 
were  not  "  historical,"  but  whom  we  see  through  the 
eyes  of  Alciphron  as  going  about  their  usual  occu- 
pations and  amusements  quite  unconscious  that  any 
one  is  studying  them.  In  short,  Alciphron  has  done 
for  the  every-day  world  of  Athens  precisely  what 
Petronius  did  for  the  every-day  world  of  Italy  a  cen- 
tury before.  Alciphron,  however,  unlike  Petronius, 
is  not  a  cynic,  and  he  sinks  his  own  personality  in 
that  of  the  individuals  who  are  supposed  to  write 
these  letters.  There  are  many  glimpses  in  them  of 
the  seamy  side  of  life.  The  amusements  of  his  Athe- 
nians were  not  always  harmless,  and  there  Is  much 
that  decidedly  does  not  tend  to  edification.  Yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  is  much  that  is  humorous  and 
kindly,  with  here  and  there  a  very  charming  touch 
of  grace  and  innocence. 

The  peculiar  feature  of  the  letters  Is  found  in  the 


ALCIPHRON  35 

fact  that  they  do  not  tell  a  story,  but  that  they  give 
you  hints  of  many  stories.  It  is  precisely  as  though 
you  had  rifled  the  contents  of  a  mail-bag  and  had 
before  you  the  stolen  letters.  From  them  you  would 
learn  innumerable  secrets ;  you  would  find  clues  to 
many  a  romance,  to  many  a  complication,  to  many  a 
scandal ;  but  the  whole  story  in  each  case  you  would 
not  know  and  could  only  guess  at  it.  There  is  some- 
thing peculiarly  piquant  in  all  this  half-revelation, 
and  it  shows  that  Alciphron,  almost  two  thousand 
years  ago,  anticipated  the  truly  realistic  theory  of 
fiction  which  in  modem  times  Is  exemplified  alone  in 
Tolstoi  and  in  some  of  the  writings  of  Anatole 
France. 

The  letters  of  Alciphron  have  never  been  fully 
translated  into  English.  About  a  hundred  years  ago 
a  version  of  some  of  them  was  published  anonymously 
in  London,  the  translators  being  two  old-fashioned 
scholars  named  William  Beloe  and  Thomas  Monro.* 
But  their  version  is  a  perfectly  impossible  one.  The 
easy,  sinuous,  rippling  Greek  of  Alciphron,  light  as 
the  petal  of  a  flower  or  the  wing  of  a  humming-bird, 
is  turned  into  stilted,  pompous,  eighteenth-century 
British  prose  that  moves  along  with  the  lumbering 
gait  of  an  elephant.  It  is  as  though  the  sprightly 
Tjcttres  de  Fcmmes  of  Marcel  Prevost  were  to  be  ren- 
dered into  the  polysyllabic  ponderosities  of  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson. 

•  A  j)rivat<ly  piiMishrd  nnd  limited  rdition  of  the  Letters 
of  Alcijihron  was  made  a  few   years  ngo. 


36      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Such  being  the  case,  I  may  venture  to  translate 
a  few  of  these  letters  in  a  somewhat  freer  manner, 
endeavouring  above  all  to  preserve  the  spirit  of  the 
original.  Some  day  the  entire  collection  should  be 
so  translated  both  for  its  own  intrinsic  interest  and 
also  because  of  its  importance  in  the  history  of  fic- 
tion. Here,  for  example,  is  the  letter  of  a  young  girl 
who  lives  in  the  suburbs  of  Athens,  probably  at  the 
PirfBUS,  which  was  the  harbour  towTi,  in  character 
a  sort  of  Sanct  Pauli  to  an  ancient  Hamburg.  The 
girl's  name  is  Glaucippe,  the  daughter  of  a  fisher- 
man. She  is  evidently  a  prototype  of  Little  Em'ly, 
and  has  been  betrothed  in  her  innocence  to  a  Pira^an 
Ham  Pcggotty.  So  long  as  she  had  seen  no  other 
men,  or,  at  any  rate,  none  but  men  of  her  own  class, 
she  had  been  happy  and  contented  in  the  thought 
of  her  coming  marriage.  But  unfortunately  for  her, 
she  has  gone  to  Athens  for  a  holiday,  and  has  there 
made  the  casual  acquaintance  of  a  Grecian  Steer- 
forth — a  man  whose  elegance  and  knowledge  of  good 
form  have  dazzled  the  poor  girl  and  played  havoc 
with  her  inexperienced  young  heart.  Instantly  the 
thought  of  the  uncouth  bridegroom  whom  her  par- 
ents have  provided  for  her  becomes  horrible.  She 
shudders  at  him  and  she  adores  wildly  and  passion- 
ately the  idle  young  Athenian  who  has  made  careless 
love  to  her.  So  she  sits  down  and  writes  this  letter 
to  her  mother: 

"Dearest   Mamma:     I   am   quite   distracted.     I   can't   bear 


ALCIPHRON  37 

the  idea  of  marrying  that  pilot's  son  as  papa  wants  me  to.  I 
have  met  Ephebus  in  the  city  where  you  let  me  go  for  the 
holidays  at  the  time  of  the  festival  in  which  he  took  part.  He 
is,  oh,  so  handsome,  mamma,  and  more  than  that,  he  is  per- 
fectly fascinating!  He  has  the  most  beautiful  curly  hair 
and  such  a  smile!  His  eyes  are  as  blue  as  the  ocean  when 
the  sun  first  rises;  and  altogether  his  face  makes  you  sure  that 
he  is  a  favourite  of  the  Graces.  You  ought  to  see  his  lips. 
They  are  as  red  as  roses.  I  have  simply  got  to  marry  him.  If 
you  don't  let  me,  I'll  throw  myself  into  the  sea  like  Sappho." 

Naturally  Glaucippc's  mother  takes  a  different 
view  of  it.  Her  answer  is  brief  and  very  much  to  the 
point. 

"  Child,  you  certainly  are  distracted.  You  must  have  gone 
crazy.  You  seem  to  have  lost  all  your  modesty  and  need  good 
sharp  treatment.  Stop  your  nonsense  right  away  and  hold 
yourself  in,  until  you  get  this  crazy  notion  out  of  your  head. 
If  voiir  father  finds  it  out  he'll  make  fish-bait  of  you  in  half 
a  jiffy." 

This  is  all  we  know  about  the  love  affair  of  young 
Glaucippc.  Perhaps  it  turned  out  as  Little  Em'Iy's 
did ;  or  perhaps  Glaucippe,  being  duly  taken  in  hand, 
became  tractable,  and  married  her  young  pilot.  But 
if  so,  it  is  pretty  certain  that  she  kept  scornfully 
comparing  him  with  the  fascinating  Ephebus,  until 
middle  age  and  many  children  stilled  in  her  heart 
the  voice  of  sentiment. 

Here  is  a  letter  from  a  mercenary  ^-oung  lady  with 
more  wants  than  scruples.  A  sentimental  youth 
named  Simalion  is  hopelessly  in  love  with  her.     He  is 


35 


CT-» 


38      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

evidently  very  young  and  wholly  under  the  control 
of  his  parents,  who  allow  him  very  little  pocket- 
money.  Hence,  the  following  letter  to  him  from  his 
Petala.  She  certainly  makes  her  meaning  very  clear. 
She  knows  with  the  unfailing  instinct  of  her  kind 
that  he  is  so  infatuated  that  even  her  contempt  will 
only  stimulate  his  unreasoning  love,  and  that  sooner 
than  lose  her  he  will  stick  at  nothing. 

"Well,  if  a  girl  could  live  on  tears,  what  a  wealthy  girl  I 
should  be!  You're  generous  enough  with  them  at  any  rate. 
Tears  are  not  quite  enough  for  me,  worse  luck!  Money  is 
what  I  want.  I've  got  to  have  jewelry,  clothes,  servants,  and 
all  that  sort  of  thing.  Nobody  ever  left  me  a  fortune  or  a 
block  of  stock,  and  that's  why  I  have  to  depend  on  little 
presents  which  gentlemen  make  me.  I've  known  you  a  whole 
year,  and  how  much  better  off  am  I,  I  should  like  to  know? 
My  hair  is  a  perfect  fright  just  because  all  that  time  I  haven't 
had  anything  to  dress  it  with;  and  as  for  clothes — why,  the 
only  dress  I've  got  in  the  world  is  so  ragged  that  I'm  ashamed 
to  be  seen  with  my  friends.  And  yet  you  imagine,  I  suppose, 
that  I  can  keep  on  this  way  forever  without  any  other  means  of 
support.  Yes,  of  course,  you  cry,  but  you  won't  cry  forever. 
I'm  really  surprised  to  see  how  many  tears  you  can  shed;  but 
if  somebody  doesn't  give  me  something  soon,  I  shall  starve  to 
death.  I  know  you  pretend  that  you're  just  crazy  for  me,  and 
that  you  can't  live  without  me.  Very  well,  then,  isn't  there 
any  silver  in  your  house?  Can't  you  get  hold  of  some  of 
your  mother's  jewelry?  Hasn't  your  father  got  anything  that 
you  can  raise  some  money  on?  Other  girls  are  luckier  than 
I  am.  They  have  lovers,  but  all  that  I  seem  to  have  is  a 
sort  of  mourner,  who  keeps  sending  me  roses  and  wreaths  and 
garlands  of  flowers  as  if  I  were  dead  and  going  to  be  buried; 
and  he  says  he  cries  for  me  all  night.  Now,  if  you  can  manage 
to  rake  up  something  for  me,  then  you  can  come  here  without 


ALCIPHRON  39 

having  to  cry  and  cry;  but  if  not,  just  keep  your  tears  to 
yourself  and  let  me  alone." 

Here  is  still  another  letter.  It  is  written  by  an  un- 
sophisticated person,  who  was  unfortunate  enough 
to  try  his  luck  in  a  gambling  house  in  one  of  the 
disreputable  quarters  of  the  city. 

"  Maybe  Tou  would  like  to  know  what's  the  matter  with  me 
and  how  I  got  my  head  broken  and  my  clothes  all  torn  to 
pieces.  Well,  the  fact  is,  I  broke  the  bank  at  a  little  game; 
but  I  wish  I  hadn't.  For  what's  the  use  of  a  man  like  me 
running  up  against  a  lot  of  heelers?  You  see,  after  I  had 
raked  in  all  the  money  in  the  place  and  they  hadn't  a  red 
cent  left,  they  all  jumped  on  my  neck  and  punched  me  and 
stoned  me  and  ripped  the  clothes  up  my  back.  All  the  same, 
I  hung  on  to  the  money  as  tight  as  I  could,  because  it  nearly 
killed  me  to  give  it  up;  and  I  did  hold  out  quite  a  while.  I 
didn't  give  in  when  they  hit  me  or  even  when  they  twisted 
my  fingers.  I  felt  like  a  Spartan  who  lets  himself  be  whipped 
just  to  see  how  much  he  can  stand  without  giving  in.  Un- 
fortunately this  isn't  Sparta  but  Athens,  and  I  was  up  against 
the  toughest  kind  of  a  gang;  and  so  when  I  was  pretty  near 
fainting  I  had  to  let  them  rol)  me.  They  went  through  my 
pockets,  and  then  after  they  had  cleaned  me  out,  they  skipped. 
Anyhow,  it's  better  to  live  without  money  than  to  die  with 
your  pockets  full  of  it." 

Finally,  let  me  cite  part  of  a  beautiful  love  letter, 
supposed  to  be  written  to  Demetrius,  the  soldier  and 
statesman,  by  a  girl  named  Tiamia.  It  is  touching 
in  its  humility — the  Immility  which  genuine  love 
teaches,  in  making  the  reality  seem  too  wonderful 
to  be  true. 


40      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

"You  will  tiiiiik  it  bold  of  me  to  write  to  you,  my  prince, 
and  you  will  care  little  for  my  letters  now  that  you  have  won 
my  love.  Indeed,  when  I  see  you  among  your  guards  and 
surrounded  l)y  your  soldiers  and  ambassadors,  and  crowned 
with  your  diadem,  I  am  wholly  overcome  and  turn  away  from 
you  as  I  would  turn  my  eyes  away  from  the  blinding  sun; 
for  then  I  know  that  you  are  really  Demetrius  the  great 
soldier.  How  imposing,  how  like  a  conqueror  you  look!  And 
then  I  feel  quite  hopeless  and  say  over  to  myself:  '  Oh,  Lamia, 
is  this  really  the  man  who  spends  his  evenings  with  you,  who 
likes  to  hear  you  sing,  who  writes  you  letters,  and  who  pre- 
fers you  to  any  other?'  I  can  only  keep  silence  and  pray 
that  you  will  come  to  me  again.  But  when  you  do  come  to 
me  and  I  kneel  at  your  feet  and  you  take  me  up  into  your 
arms — then  I  wonder  whether  this  is  really  the  stormer  of 
cities.  And  with  my  lute  I  lay  siege  to  the  besieger  and  try 
whether  he  who  has  conquered  others  will  himself  ■  be  con- 
quered. 

"  I  shall  never  attempt  to  win  you  by  any  arts.  I  shall 
never  lie  to  you  as  others  do  or  be  unfaithful.  Since  you 
first  loved  me,  no  other  men  have  even  looked  at  me,  much 
less  made  love  to  me.  Love  comes  quickly  and  it  goes  with- 
out a  warning.  The  man  who  still  has  something  to  receive 
comes  as  it  were  on  wings,  while  he  to  whom  everything  has 
been  given,  grows  tired  and  goes  away.  I  know  this,  and 
I  know  that  many  women  seek  to  hold  their  lovers  by  always 
keeping  something  back;  and  yet  with  you  I  can  not  do  this 
thing;  for  I  trust  you,  and  I  do  not  fear  that  you  will  ever  tire 
of  me.  It  might  be  different  with  others,  but  upon  you  who 
are  bound  to  me  and  who  are  so  proud  to  have  others  see 
you  with  me,  I  could  not  practise  these  small  arts,  or  use 
even  the  most  insignificant  deceit.  I  should  be  a  fool  to  do 
so,  for  I  should  tliink  it  a  small  sacrifice  to  give  up  every- 
thing to  please  you,  even  life  itself." 

Only  by  quoting  very  many  of  these  letters  could 
an  accurate  idea  be  given  of  the  extremely  vivid  way 


ALCIPHRON  41 

in  which  they  reproduce  for  us  the  throbbing  life  of  a 
great  and  luxurious  city.  In  the  pages  of  Alciphron 
we  find  ourselves  actually  in  Athens,  elbowing  in  its 
crowded  streets  a  hundred  various  types — the  gilded 
youth,  the  staid  and  cautious  merchants,  the  barbers 
standing  at  their  shop  doors  and  begging  customers 
to  enter,  the  bunco  men,  the  jugglers,  the  drunken 
soldiers,  the  market  women — all,  in  fact,  who  make 
up  a  city's  throng.  We  go  with  Alciphron  into  the 
houses  of  the  Bohemian  set  and  take  part  in  their 
jolly  dinners  at  which  poets  and  artists  eat  and  drink 
and  talk  and  sing ;  and  as  we  watch  them,  all  the  cen- 
turies that  lie  between  us  melt  away,  and  we  see  once 
more  that  human  life  and  human  nature  are  essen- 
tially the  same  in  every  age  and  every  land,  and  that 
the  fascination  of  them  is  unalterable  and  eternal. 


( 


MILTON 


Ill 

MILTON 

Shakespeare  and  IMilton  are  the  two  great  columns 
that  support  the  splendid  structure  of  English  let- 
ters. Almost  instinctively,  when  we  name  one  of 
them,  the  other  comes  to  mind.  And  yet  there  are 
few  points  of  resemblance  in  the  two.  There  are 
many  points  of  contrast.  We  know  very  little  indeed 
about  the  life  of  Shakespeare ;  but  all  that  we  do 
know  is  consistent  with  a  single  character.  It  is  pos- 
sible to  visualise  a  Shakespeare  to  ourselves — a  bril- 
liant, ready,  versatile  man  of  the  world,  a  friend  of 
tlie  great  no  less  than  of  his  own  early  associates,  a 
practical  man  of  affairs,  and  withal  one  whose  inner 
soul  was  pregnant  with  sublimities  and  beauties.  The 
character  is  congruous  in  every  part. 

lint  when  we  come  to  IMilton,  of  whom  much  is 
known,  the  difficulty  is  infinitely  greater,  the  con- 
tradictions are  far  more  numerous.  According  as 
wo  view  him  from  one  angle  or  another,  he  seems 
quite  inconsistent  with  himself.  Indeed,  there  arc 
several  Miltons,  each  of  them  almost  unrelated  to  the 
others.  What  has  the  young  Milton,  expanding 
under   the  blue   skies   of   Italy,   writing   sonnets    to 

45 


4G      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

pretty  girls  or  singing  in  blithesome  mood  of  "  spiry 
nut-brown  ale "  and  "  tipsy  dance  and  jollity  "— 
^vhat  has  he  to  do  with  the  dour  Latin  secretary  to 
the  Commonwealth,  inditing  grave  despatches  olt 
state,  or  hurling  foul  names  at  the  Lord  Protector's 
enemies?  And  still  another  Milton  is  the  Milton  who 
wrote  Paradise  Lost — dignified,  austere,  and  yet  be- 
nignant. We  are  apt  to  think  of  Milton  as  the  strict- 
est of  religionists,  and  it  Is  hard  to  reconcile  this 
aspect  of  the  man  with  his  neglect  of  public  worship 
and  with  the  fact  that  in  his  later  years  he  had  no 
prayers  at  home.  'And  then  there  is  the  harsh,  stern, 
tyrannical  Milton  who  made  even  his  children  hate 
him — the  schoolmaster  and  writer  on  education,  who, 
nevertheless,  would  not  have  his  eldest  daughter  even 
learn  to  write. 

Here  we  find  what  seems  to  be  a  paradox,  or  rather 
a  whole  series  of  paradoxes  embodied  In  one  man. 
IIow  shall  we  analyse  a  character  such  as  this  ?  How 
shall  we  make  him  seem  reasonable  and  consistent? 
The  problem  has  puzzled  many  students  of  English 
literature.  The  late  Dr.  Richard  Garnett  made  the 
most  lamentable  failure  In  his  treatment  of  it.  James 
Russell  Lowell  came  nearest  to  the  truth.  It  may 
be  well  to  review  the  traits  of  Milton  as  seen  at  dif- 
ferent periods  of  his  life,  and  then,  perhaps,  attempt 
to  find  some  link  that  will  unite  them  all. 

Dr.  Garnett  wrote :  "  The  author  and  his  books 
are  set  at  variance,  and  an  attempt  to  conceive  his 


MILTON  47 

character  as  a  whole,  results  in  confusion  and  incon- 
sistency." But  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  Milton  seems  as 
perfect  a  representation  as  any  of  his  compeers  of 
the  sensitive  and  impulsive  passion  of  the  poetical 
temperament."  So  apparently,  it  is  all  a  question  of 
temperament,  a  thing  in  whose  name  as  many  blun- 
ders are  committed  as  there  were  crimes  committed 
in  the  name  of  liberty,  according  to  Madame  Roland. 
Let  us  see. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Milton,  whose  three 
hundredth  birthday  fell  on  December  9,  1908,  was 
one  who,  from  the  first,  enjoyed  an  unusual  independ- 
ence. His  father  was  a  man  of  what  might  be  con- 
sidered wealth  and  was,  besides,  a  writer,  an  excellent 
musician,  and  keenly  alive  to  the  nascent  genius  of 
his  son.  Therefore,  young  Milton  was  free  to  follow 
his  own  inclinations  and  to  live  the  sort  of  life  that 
he  preferred.  It  was  a  grave  and  sober  life  for  a 
young  English  boy — a  life  of  much  study  and  hard 
reading  and  serious  thinking,  yet  not  the  life  of  a 
recluse  or  of  one  who  has  to  think  of  a  profession. 
It  was,  on  the  other  hand,  the  sort  of  life  to  "  eman- 
cipate the  ego,"  to  make  the  boy  think  well  of  him- 
self, and  to  care  very  little  for  what  others  thought. 
So,  at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  he  resented  the 
overbearing  manner  of  his  tutor,  whereupon  his  tutor, 
as  it  is  recorded,  "  whipt  him,"  this  being  the  last 
instance  of  corporal  punishment  inflicted  at  either 
of  the  two  great  English  universities.    There  is  some- 


48      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

thing  piquant  in  the  tliought  of  the  poet  of  heaven 
and  hell  being  "  whipt  "  by  a  self-sufficient  tutor. 
Milton  was  then  rusticated,  or  perhaps  withdrew  to 
recover  from  the  indignity.  He  returned  to  take  his 
degree,  but  thereafter  he  had  no  love  for  Cambridge. 
He  had  thought  of  taking  orders  in  the  Church  of 
England;  but  he  hated  all  authority,  and  would  not 
subscribe  to  a  written  creed. 

Then  came  the  period  of  his  journey  through 
France  into  Italy,  where  he  practised  his  Italian  in 
writing  complimentary  sonnets — now  to  scholars  and 
now  to  an  anonymous  lady  at  Bologna.  It  is  unlikely 
that  she  made  any  great  impression  on  his  heart,  for 
his  sonnets  to  her  are  written  with  much  more  concern 
for  the  correctness  of  the  style  than  for  the  favour 
of  the  lady.  In  Italy,  Milton  again  showed  his  per- 
sonal independence.  Opposed  to  the  Catholic  Church, 
he  could  at  most  be  made  to  promise  not  to  bring 
theological  topics  into  his  talk.  If  others  did  so  he 
would  speak  out  boldly  what  he  thought.  He  also 
paid  a  visit  to  the  blind  GaHleo,  who  was  out  of  fa- 
vour with  the  Church ;  and  Milton  must  have  remem- 
bered this  visit  long  afterward  in  the  days  of  his  own 
blindness,  which  joined  him  to  the  list  of  sightless 
great  men :  with  the  mythic  GEdipus  among  kings, 
with  the  mythic  Homer  among  poets,  with  the  mythic 
Samson  among  warriors,  with  Galileo  among  men  of 
science,  and,  still  later,  with  Bach  and  Handel  among 
musicians. 


MILTON  49 

But  as  jet  Milton  was  young,  and  he  enjoyed  the 
life  and  the  half-pagan  lore  of  Italy,  returning  to 
England  at  the  early  rumblings  of  the  great  civil 
war.  In  London,  he  taught  a  very  small  private 
school,  living  austerely  on  the  simplest  fare;  yet, 
oddly  enough,  breaking  away  from  his  sobriety  to 
visit  sundry  festive  young  friends  of  his  at  Gray's 
Inn,  with  whom,  as  his  nephew  wrote,  "  he  would  so 
far  make  bold  with  his  body  as  now  and  then  to  keep 
a  gaudy-day."  Just  what  this  means  is  by  no  means 
certain ;  but  it  was  obviously  a  reaction  against  too 
much  theology  and  too  little  cheer.  At  this  time, 
when  he  was  about  thirty-five  years  of  age,  he  mar- 
ried his  first  wife,  Mary  Powell,  the  daughter  of  an 
Oxfordshire  Cavalier  squire,  accustomed  to  fun  and 
frolic,  to  hunting  and  to  the  jollity  of  house-parties. 
Milton  brought  her  to  his  home  in  London,  and  there 
seem  to  have  been  for  her  few  "  gaudy-days  "  in  that 
ascetic  habitation.  For  Milton  had  now  become 
possessed  of  a  fixed  idea.  He  was  no  more  plain 
John  ^lilton.  He  was  a  power  in  Church  and  State. 
He  was  writing  tractates  on  religion,  and  others  on 
education,  and  was  making  ready  to  share  in  the 
strange  misrule  which  Cromwell  was  to  force  on 
England. 

He  had  little  thought  to  give  a  wife,  and  little 
leisure;  and  so,  after  a  single  month,  she  left  hlin 
and  returned  to  her  father,  as  for  a  visit.  But,  as 
time  went  on,  she  did  not  return  to  London,  Milton 


50      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

wrote  her  again  and  again,  but  received  no  answer. 
He  sent  a  messenger,  who  was  insulted.  It  is  not 
likely  that  Milton  cared  much  for  her,  yet  it  made 
liim  angry  to  be  treated  with  contempt.  No  woman 
ever  received  serious  consideration  from  him.  His 
opinions  of  them  were  like  those  of  Lafcadio  Ilcarn. 
But  they  must  take  him  seriously,  and  so  he  set  forth 
in  several  pamphlets  the  doctrine  that  a  man,  with- 
out any  legal  process,  may,  of  his  own  free  will, 
divorce  a  woman  who  has  failed  in  her  obedience  to 
him.  Before  long  he  had  come  to  regard  Mrs.  Mil- 
ton as  non-existent,  and  had  set  himself  briskly  to 
courting  another  girl. 

But,  by  this  time,  the  civil  war  was  well  under 
way.  The  Royalists  were  shaken  by  the  sledge-ham- 
mer blows  of  Cromwell.  Milton's  father-in-law  was 
not  unwilling  to  receive  protection  from  his  Round- 
head son-in-law.  The  wife  fell  at  Milton's  feet  and 
wept  and  begged  him  to  forgive  her;  and  presently 
both  she  and  her  immediate  relatives  were  sheltered 
safely  in  Milton's  home.  Her  spirit  had  been  broken, 
and  nothing  more  is  told  of  her  from  this  time  until 
her  death  a  few  years  later. 

The  whole  episode  of  Milton's  domestic  life  is  too 
well  known  for  repetition.  His  eldest  daughter, 
Anne,  was  a  cripple  and  defective  in  her  speech,  yet 
exceedingly  attractive.  His  second  daughter,  Mary, 
who  never  married,  was  plain  and  peevish,  and  it  was 
she  most  of  all  who  was  drilled  and  disciplined  by  her 


MILTON  51 

father  into  learning  to  pronounce  and  read  aloud  to 
him  in  seven  languages  without  understanding  a  word 
of  what  she  read.  The  third  daughter,  Deborah, 
had  some  share  in  this  training.  But  she  escaped  at 
last  by  marrying  a  weaver,  and  long  afterward, 
when  ignorant  and  old,  she  was  sought  out  by  Addi- 
son, and  her  father's  mask  of  Comus  was  performed 
for  her  benefit.  But  she  herself  knew  nothing  of 
Covins,  or  of  what  a  benefit  meant ;  though  she  was 
glad  to  get  the  hundred  and  twenty  pounds  which  it 
brought  to  her. 

There  is  something  very  sordid  and  unpleasant  in 
the  thought  of  Milton's  life  at  home  after  his  bhnd- 
ness  came  upon  him.  His  daughters  were  his  slaves, 
and,  like  all  slaves,  they  united  against  their  master. 
Thus,  if  Milton  made  them  read  to  him  for  long  hours 
and  rated  them  for  their  mistakes,  they  took  their 
revenge  in  petty  pilfering,  and  they  sold  for  their 
private  gain  many  of  the  books  he  loved.  Four  years 
after  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  he  married  one 
Catharine  Woodcock,  who  must  have  made  him 
liappy,  for  he  wrote  a  sonnet  to  her  memory.  But 
she  hvcd  only  a  short  while.  Wlien  he  was  fifty-five  he 
married  for  the  third  time,  a  very  pretty  girl,  Eliza- 
beth Minshull,  thirty  years  younger  than  himself. 
Slic  seems  to  have  been  made  his  wife  so  that  she 
might  care  for  him  and  keep  him  from  "  the  unkind 
children,"  whom  he  mentions  so  bitterly  in  his  will. 
It  was  understood  that  as  a  reward  she  was  to  be  his 


52      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

sole  heiress;  and  once,  when  she  had  prepared  a 
favourite  dish  for  him,  he  said  with  pleasure,  "  Why, 
God  ha'  mercy,  Betty!  I  see  thou  wilt  perform  ac- 
cording to  thy  promise ;  and  when  I  die,  thou  knowest 
that  I  have  left  thee  all."  In  his  will  he  did  leave 
her  all,  but  the  will  was  broken;  and  out  of  fifteen 
hundred  pounds,  three  hundred  were  divided  among 
the  daughters  evenly.  How  Mary  Milton,  the  reader 
of  seven  languages,  felt  toward  her  father  may  be 
gathered  from  what  she  said  when  it  was  told  her 
that  he  was  to  marry  Mistress  Minshull. 

"  That  is  no  news,"  she  snapped  out  with  a  flirt 
of  her  head ;  "  but  if  you  were  to  tell  me  he  was  dead, 
that  would  be  something!" 

It  is  pleasanter  to  draw  a  veil  over  this  chapter  of 
a  great  man's  life.  His  public  fame  began  after 
Charles  I.  was  executed  by  the  leaders  of  the  arniy. 
All  Europe  stood  aghast  at  such  a  deed.  English- 
men, even  those  who  had  fought  against  the  armies 
of  the  king,  were  for  a  moment  hushed.  Then,  strong 
and  clear  in  sonorous  Latin,  came  a  justification  of 
the  regicides.  The  voice  was  Milton's,  and  from 
this  time  until  the  Restoration  he  was  a  man  of  mark. 
His  command  of  Latin — the  diplomatic  language  of 
that  century — was  notable.  His  periods  were  turned 
with  skill.  He  had  a  wonderful  vocabulary  of  abuse. 
Charles  II.,  in  exile,  commanded  Salmasius  (Claude 
de  Saumaise)  to  defend  the  late  king's  acts.  Salma- 
sius and  Milton  were  pitted  one  against  the  other  like 


MILTON  5  3 

two  gladiators.  They  hurled  back  and  forth  the 
vilest  epithets  in  Latin.  "  Swine,"  "  dog,"  "  eunuch," 
were  among  the  tamest  of  these  compliments.  Milton 
twitted  Salmasius  with  having  a  shrew  for  a  wife, 
and  when  Salmasius  died  soon  after,  it  is  said  that 
Milton  was  pleased  to  imagine  that  his  opponent  had 
died  of  mortification.  But  Nemesis  awaited  Milton 
also.  When  he  began  his  controversy  with  Salma- 
sius he  was  told  that  his  eyesight  would  not  stand 
the  strain  of  carrying  it  through.  He  did  not  hesi- 
tate, but  went  on  to  the  end,  and  he  became  blind. 
Then  the  Royalists  declared  with  a  grin  of  joy  that 
Milton's  blindness  was  the  punishment  which  Heaven 
had  sent  upon  him  for  defending  the  slayers  of  the 
king.  To-day  one  may  at  least  regret  that  it  came 
from  his  intense  determination  to  outwit  a  brother 
scholar  in  foul  language,  even  though  that  language 
had  a  classic  form. 

Indeed,  when  the  facts  are  fully  understood,  it  is 
impossible  to  admire  ]Milton  for  his  share  in  this 
rather  famous  controversy.  It  has  been  said  that 
his  conduct  was  heroic ;  that  he  felt  so  driven  on  by 
what  he  thoiiglit  to  be  his  duty  that  he  risked  his 
c^'csight  recklessly  yet  nobly ;  and  that  in  conse- 
quence, he  affords  a  fine  example  of  self-sacrifice 
and  of  loyalty  to  a  cause.  But  his  polemic  was 
not  inspired  wholly  by  his  hatred  of  King  Charles  or 
by  his  devotion  to  the  regicides.  Salmasius  was  then 
the  most  conspicuous  Protestant  scholar  in  Europe. 


5i      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL   LITERATURES 

He  held  a  high  position  in  Leyden.  Whoever  should 
attack  him  would  run  no  risk,  since  defeat  would  be 
generally  expected,  while  success  would  be  a  dazzling 
triumph.  And  so  Milton  hurled  his  invectives  at 
the  man  who  was  so  conspicuous  a  mark,  just  as 
that  master  of  vitriolic  language  and  shameful  innu- 
endo, Kaspar  Scioppius,  at  Ingolstadt,  had  flung  his 
poisoned  shafts  at  the  great  Scaliger.  Scaliger  died 
soon  after  this  polemic  just  as  Salmasius  died  soon 
after  Milton  had  covered  him  with  scorn.  It  was  a 
fierce,  unsparing  age  in  which  no  quarter  was  given 
or  expected,  and  where  the  weaker  must  go  unpitied 
to  the  wall.  Milton  loved  controversy.  He  was 
grim,  pugnacious,  and  full  of  self-esteem.  The  sort 
of  glory  which  would  come  to  him  from  meeting  so 
famous  an  adversary  was  the  sort  of  glory  that  he 
loved  the  most.  And  there  is  something  else  to  be 
observed.  Milton  received  a  reward  more  tangible 
than  praise.  A  thousand  pounds  were  paid  him,  a 
sum  equivalent  to  several  times  that  amount  to-day, 
and,  in  fact,  constituting  two-thirds  of  the  estate 
which  he  afterwards  left  behind  him  at  his  death. 
Finally,  he  was  made  Latin  secretary  to  the  Council 
of  State,  at  an  annual  salary  of  two  hundred  pounds. 
For  England  had  now  taken  on  a  new  form  of 
government.  Cromwell,  with  his  sable  garments  cov- 
ering a  steel  corselet  to  turn  aside  the  assassin's  dag- 
ger, had  gone  in  state  to  take  the  oath  as  Lord  Pro- 
tector, with  a  single  House  of  Parliament  and   a 


MILTON  55 

subservient  Council.  Charles  I.,  the  lawful  king,  had 
been  tried  and  slain  for  ruling  without  Parliament, 
and  for  raising  taxes  of  his  own  imposing.  The 
Lord  Protector  now  divided  England  into  ten  military 
districts,  with  ten  major-generals  to  govern  them  by 
the  strong  hand;  and  he  taxed  the  nation  far  more 
heavily  than  the  king  had  ever  done.  But  Cromwell 
never  held  that  the  majority  should  rule;  he  believed 
in  the  right  which  comes  from  force  of  brain  and 
arm.  When  Milton  was  made  Latin  secretary  to 
the  Council,  it  became  his  duty  to  turn  into  Latin  all 
diplomatic  papers,  and  to  answer  all  attacks  which 
were  made  upon  the  Lord  Protector.  He  was,  there- 
fore, Cromwell's  literary  bravo.  INIany  have  thought 
that  he  was  the  personal  secretary  of  the  Lord  Pro- 
tector, and  one  would  like  to  imagine  the  intercourse 
of  two  such  extraordinary  men.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  there  is  not  even  a  scrap  of  historical  evi- 
dence to  show  that  they  ever  met.  The  famous  paint- 
ing which  depicts  Cromwell  as  dictating  to  Milton  a 
despatch  intended  for  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  on  the 
massacre  of  the  Vaudois,  is  due  only  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  an  artist.  Milton  speaks  of  himself  as  living 
in  retirement  and  as  having  no  influence  in  the  coun- 
cils of  the  great.  Still,  in  his  second  "  Defence  of  the 
English  People,"  he  inserts  a  noble  apostrophe  to 
Cromwell;  while  in  a  sonnet  addressed  directly  to 
"  the  Lord  General  "  occur  two  famous  lines  which 
would  make  any  man  immortal. 


56      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Peace  hath  her  victories 
No  less  renowned  than  war. 

To  cite  these  lines  is  to  suggest  the  question,  Why 
is  Milton  set  side  by  side  with  Shakespeare?  He  is 
much  less  widely  read.  The  appeal  which  he  makes 
is  less  truly  universal.  His  greatest  poem  is  an  epic, 
and  much  of  it  belongs  to  an  age  of  a  now  outworn 
theology.  Taine,  with  a  touch  of  genuine  French 
malice,  lets  his  wit  play  around  the  theological  por- 
tions of  Paradise  Lost.  Thus,  says  Taine,  "  Adam 
entered  Paradise  by  way  of  England.  .  .  Adam 
is  your  true  paterfamilias,  with  a  vote,  an  M.  P.,  an 
old  Oxford  man,  consulted  at  need  by  his  wife,  deal- 
ing out  to  her  with  prudent  measure  the  scientific  ex- 
planations which  she  required."  An  angel  comes  to 
dine  with  them,  and  as  the  dishes  are  not  cooked  "  no 
fear  lest  dinner  cool."  The  angel,  says  Taine, 
"  though  ethereal,  eats  like  a  Lincolnshire  farmer, 
*  with  keen  despatch,  of  real  hunger,  and  concoctive 
heat  to  transsubstantiate.'  "  "  At  table,  Eve  listens 
to  the  angel's  stories,  and  then  discreetly  rises  at  des- 
sert when  they  are  getting  into  politics."  The  Deity, 
as  conceived  by  Milton,  is  half  theologian  and  half 
despot.  "  Goethe's  God,  half  abstraction,  half  legend, 
source  of  calm  oracles  .  .  .  greatly  excels  this 
ISIiltonic  God  "  who  is  only  "  a  schoolmaster  foresee- 
ing the  fault  of  his  pupil  and  then  telling  him  before- 
hand the  rule  of  grammar  so  as  to  have  the  pleasure 
of  scolding  him  without  discussion." 


MILTON  '57 

Nevertheless,  one  ranks  Milton  witH  Shakespeare 
because,  like  Shakespeare,  he  had  the  rare,  divine, 
and  unmistakable  gift  of  fusing  thought  and  lan- 
guage in  such  a  way,  and  with  such  fire  of  genius,  as 
to  render  the  combination  overwhelming,  never-to- 
be-forgotten,  irresistible.  It  is  not  the  trick  of  the 
facile  phrase.  It  is  the  supreme  dominance  of  the 
lure  of  language.  Indeed,  there  are  not  a  few  of 
Milton's  passages  which,  if  quoted  ofFhand,  would, 
even  by  many  intelligent  people,  be  at  once  ascribed 
to  Shakespeare.  Such  are  the  two  lines  already 
cited.     Such,  again,  are  the  following: 

That  last  infinnity  of  noble  minds. 

To-morrow  to  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new. 

He  touched  the  tender  stops  of  various  quills. 

Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out. 

Hell 
Grew   darker   at  their   frown. 

Myself  am  hellj 
And  in  the  lowest  deep  a  lower  deep. 

Heaven  opened  wide 
Her  ever-during  gates,  harmonious  sound. 
On  golden  hinges  moving. 

There  are  lines  and  phrases  from  Paradise  Lost 
which  many  believe  to  be  Biblical,  ratlicr  than  Mil- 
tonic.    They  all  have  a  quality  of  crag-like  greatness. 


58      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

ns  do  sonic  of  the  splendid  passages  of  his  prose. 
It  is  not  true,  as  Addison  remarked,  that  "  our  lan- 
guage sank  under  him,"  or,  as  others  of  later  date 
have  written,  that  he  is  too  uniformly  majestic,  so 
that  wc  hear  only  organ  strains  in  Milton's  music. 
In  his  lovely  poems,  L' Allegro  and  II  Penseroso, 
which  were  written  at  Horton,  near  Windsor,  when 
he  was  twenty-five,  there  is  a  whole  fairy  orchestra 
of  chiming  bells,  and  flutes,  and  harps.  There  is 
playfulness  as  well  as  the  rarest  poetic  fancy.  Who 
will  not  recall : 

Sport,  that  wrinkled  Care  derides. 
And  Laughter  holding  both  his  sides. 

Come  and  trip  it  as  ye  go. 
On   the  light   fantastic  toe? 

And  again, 

Where    glowing    embers    through    the    room 
Teach  light  to  counterfeit  a  gloom. 

And  wonderfully  Shakespearean  is  that  daring  mix- 
ture of  metaphors  in  Lycidas: 

Blind  mouths,  that  scarce  themselves  know  how  to  hold 
A  sheep-hook, 

which  can  fairly  be  set  beside  that  other  expressive 
paradox  in  Paradise  Lost, 

No  light,  but  rather  darkness  visible. 


MILTON  59 

Here,  briefly,  we  may  see  why  Milton,  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  language,  stands  second  only  to  Shake- 
speare, and  how,  though  harsh  and  rough  at  times, 
he  can  evoke  the  very  soul  of  music. 

Milton's  Latinity  was  classical,  though  not  pre- 
cisely Ciceronian  or  Vergilian.  Nor  is  it  always 
above  criticism.  In  fact,  Dr.  Johnson  rather  neatly 
pointed  out  that  in  one  sentence  which  takes  Salma- 
sius  to  task  for  an  alleged  syntactical  slip,  Milton 
himself  makes  a  worse  one.  He  tends  to  ignore  the 
subjunctive  mood,  thereby  losing  certain  shades  of 
meaning  just  as  Johnson  himself  did  when  he  wrote 
that  famous  but  rather  faulty  line  for  Goldsmith's 

epitaph: 

Nihil  tetigit  quod  non  ornavit. 

Milton,  like  every  writer  of  modern  Latin  whose 
own  personality  is  strong,  broke  through  the  tram- 
mels of  Ciceronianism  and  left  a  subtle  impress  of 
his  modes  of  thought  upon  the  classic  diction.  One 
feels  a  difference  which  is  often  not  easy  to  describe 
but  which  is  there.  The  words  arc  the  words  of  a 
Roman,  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of  an  English- 
man. Then,  again,  he  admits  of  necessity  to  his 
pages  a  great  many  modern  proper  names  and  other 
barbarous  expressions,  such  as  hundrcda,  hornharda, 
and  the  like.  Perhaps,  also,  one  is  repelled  by  his 
fondness  for  extremely  physical  and  sornctiincs  dis- 
gusting imagery,  which  is  a  defect  that  mars  his 
English  prose  as  well.     Iloratians  ought  never  to 


CO      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

forgive  him  for  his  woeful  rendering  of  the  pretty 
Pj'rrha  ode  into  Englisli  "  without  rhyme,  accord- 
ing to  the  Latin  measure,  as  near  as  the  language 
will  permit."  Obviously  the  language  was  obdurate 
and  permitted  very  little,  for  the  Miltonic  version 
blunders  and  stumbles  along  with  no  approach  what- 
ever to  the  rhythm,  not  to  say  the  ease  and  grace,  of 
the  Latin.  I  suppose  that  every  English  or  Ameri- 
can scholar  who  has  annotated  the  Odes  of  Horace, 
has  faithfully  recorded  Milton's  abominable  trans- 
lation of  simplex  munditiis.  "  Plain  in  thy  neat- 
ness."— "  Plain  "  !  forsooth,  and  "  neatness  "  !  One 
would  suppose  that  Milton  was  describing  some  Eng- 
lish dairy  maid.  You  can  almost  see  the  cap  and 
apron  and  the  red  hands.  How  far  removed  from 
this  is  the  Pyrrha  of  Horace — a  graceful,  exquisite, 
coquettish  girl,  simple  in  her  daintiness,  standing  be- 
fore the  dark  background  of  a  cool  grotto  with  a 
great  mass  of  vivid  roses  clustering  above  her  head. 
It  is  strange  that  he  who  wove  together  so  many  light 
fancies  in  his  youthful  poetry  should  have  failed  so 
utterly  to  reproduce  the  charm  of  Horace.  Milton- 
ists,  therefore,  call  it  merely  "  a  metrical  experi- 
ment," yet  this  is  hardly  an  excuse.  It  is  the 
inalienable  right  of  every  man  to  make  an  ass  of 
himself  in  the  seclusion  of  his  own  library ;  but  when 
he  publishes  his  "  experiments,"  he  is  fair  game  for 
every  critic. 

The  apparent  contradictions  of  Milton's  character 


MILTON  61 

are  apparent  only.  He  is  essentially  the  idealist  who 
associates  his  ideal  too  closely  with  himself.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Independents  of  his  time — a  fierce 
rough  time — is  not  so  far  removed  in  essence  from 
that  of  the  New  England  transcendentalists  of  two 
hundred  years  later.  Milton  drifts  from  Episcopacy, 
from  Presbyterianism,  into  Free  Thought  and  Unita- 
rianism,  very  much  as  Emerson  drifted  when  he 
preached  his  last  sermon  and  resigned  his  pulpit. 
Milton  was  no  exponent  of  a  creed,  though  he  studied 
the  Scriptures  with  deep  care.  His  view  of  woman 
was  part  of  his  indifference  to  what  he  thought 
the  minor  things  of  life.  Old  Johnson  said  of  him 
rather  grimly,  "  He  thought  woman  fitted  only  for 
obedience,  as  he  thought  man  fitted  only  for  rebel- 
lion." Indeed,  some  lines  spoken  by  Adam  in  Para- 
dise Lost*  no  doubt  convey  Milton's  own  opinion  of 
the  other  sex : 

Oh,  why  (lid  Cod, 
Creator  wise,  that  peopled  highest  heaven 
With  spirits  masculine,  create  at  last 
This  novelty  on  Earth,  this   fair  defect 
Of  Nature,  and  not  fill  the  World  at  once 
With   men   as   Angels,  without   feminine; 
Or  find  some  other  way  to  generate 
Mankind? 

Milton's  youth  was  one  of  purity  and  seriousness. 
'At  his  college  ho  was  nicknamed  "  the  Lady."  The 
brief   Italian    period   of   his    life   had   the   tempered 

7i*f    oOOm 


62      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

brightness  of  a  winter  morning.  After  that  he  be- 
came what  circumstances  made  him.  Scarcely  any 
other  author  of  such  great  renown  has  been  so  essen- 
tially the  result  of  his  environment.  On  him  the 
fierceness  of  religious  controversy  and  the  grim  scenes 
of  civil  war  set  their  mark  deeply,  until  it  was  seared 
into  his  very  soul.  Then  his  blindness  came  and  left 
him  a  brooding,  introspective  creature  who  saw  sol- 
emn and  majestic  images;  so  that,  shutting  out  this 
world,  his  sightless  eyes  were  turned,  as  it  were,  to  the 
world  of  which  he  had  read  In  the  majestic  utterances 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets.  A  recent  English  writer  has 
observed  that  nowhere  does  Milton  show  any  sym- 
pathy with  animals.  It  is  an  acute  remark  because 
it  extends  much  farther.  He  had  little  sympathy, 
indeed,  with  anything  which  concerned  the  gentler 
side  of  life.  Before  his  fancy  there  loomed  gigantic 
shapes  and  the  vast  illimitable  stretches  of  another 
world.  His  daring  Imagination  carried  him  not  only 
to  the  gloomy  gulfs  of  hell,  but  upward  to  the  very 
throne  of  God.  And  so  his  greatest  poem,  over  which 
he  brooded  for  more  than  twenty  years,  lacks  soft- 
ness and  atones  for  it  by  sheer  sublimity. 

One  prefers  to  think  of  him  as  he  appeared  in  his 
old  age,  enjoying  a  modest  Income,  already  secure 
of  his  fame,  visited  by  many  friends  and  warmly 
praised  by  Dryden.  At  his  home,  he  sat  in  the  sun- 
shine, or  played  upon  the  organ,  the  cares  and  pas- 
sion of  his  middle  life  having  long  since  died  away. 


MILTON  6$ 

He  had  given  new  splendour  and  fresh  power  to  our 
noble  English  speech.  If  much  that  he  wrote  is  no 
longer  widely  read,  it  still  resembles  some  gigantic 
monolith  covered  with  written  records  in  characters 
which  few  are  able  to  decipher.  Their  purport  has 
none  the  less  passed  into  the  life  and  speech  and 
thought  of  myriads  who  unconsciously  preserve 
them  and  thereby  do  them  reverence. 


i 


THE  LYRICS  OF  TENNYSON 


i 


IV 

THE    LYRICS    OF    TENNYSON 

A  GREAT  author,  as  he  passes  through  the  centuries, 
resembles  somewhat  the  master  of  a  caravan  who 
passes  through  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  a 
dreary  desert.  When  the  latter  sets  out,  he  has,  let 
us  suppose,  all  the  appointments  required  for  the 
journey — the  luxuries  as  well  as  the  necessities.  As 
he  proceeds,  however,  day  after  day,  encountering 
dangers,  unforeseen  accidents,  sand-storms,  and  the 
hardships  that  weary  his  pack-animals,  he  finds  it 
necessary  to  dispense  with  much  of  his  equipment. 
One  thing  after  another  is  cast  away — first  those 
things  which  are  really  superfluous,  and  then  those 
which,  though  greatly  needed,  are  not  absolutely  in- 
dispensable. When  he  reaches  the  end  of  his  journey 
he  has  with  him  only  such  as  could  not  possibly 
have  been  spared.  They  represent  the  inevitable 
residuum.  Because  they  were  the  most  necessary  of 
all  that  he  had,  they  have  become  the  most  precious. 
For  this  reason  they  have  stayed  with  him  until  the 
very  end. 

So  it  is  with  the  author  who  has  written  much. 
The  men  and  women  of  his  own  time  can  not  be  sure 
which  of  his  works  are  the  finest  and  the  most  likely 
to  endure.  Some  will  prefer  one,  and  some  another, 
according  to  their  particular  tastes.     It  is  only  after 

«7 


68      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

the  writer  has  died,  and  when  he  begins,  so  to  speak, 
Iiis  journey  through  the  ages,  that  the  real  test  comes 
which  will  sift  out  of  all  his  writings  those  that  can 
best  be  spared,  and  will  save  the  few  that  most  de- 
serve to  live  and  that  can  not  be  spared  at  all. 

There  are  numerous  illustrations  of  this  in  literary 
history,  and  it  is  not  necessary  to  look  back  many 
centuries  in  order  to  find  some  very  interesting  ones. 
Thus,  out  of  the  mass  of  plays  and  stories  which 
Cerv^antes  wrote,  Don  Quixote  is  the  only  work  that 
has  endured.  Of  Dryden's  multifarious  writings  the 
world  remembers  now  only  his  Ode  on  St.  Cecilia's 
Day,  and  the  single  play,  All  for  Love,  which  tells 
the  story  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra  in  a  manner  rival- 
ing even  that  of  Shakespeare.  Coming  nearer  to  our 
own  time,  Goethe  will  be  remembered  by  the  world  at 
large  only  through  the  first  part  of  his  Faust.  Sir 
Walter  Scott's  long  string  of  novels  and  romances 
are  likewise  being  sifted  out,  so  as  to  leave  only  half 
a  dozen  which  any  one  but  special  students  of  Eng- 
lish literature  will  care  to  read.  Robert  Southey 
wrote  every  day  from  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning 
until  noon ;  he  corrected  proofs  through  the  after- 
noon ;  and  in  the  evening  he  made  memoranda  for 
new  works ;  but  out  of  all  his  epics,  poems,  satires, 
and  histories,  which  he  thought  would  Hve  forever, 
there  remains  practically  nothing  except  the  little 
nursery  classic  known  to  every  child  as  The  Three 
Bears.  And  these  examples  could  be  multiplied  in- 
definitely were  it  worth  our  while.    Only  in  the  case 


THE    LYRICS    OF    TENNYSON  69 

of  a  genius  of  the  highest  order,  such  as  Shakespeare, 
is  every  scrap  of  his  work  preserved  and  cherished; 
and  even  of  Shakespeare's,  there  are  many  pla^^s 
which  are  never  put  upon  the  stage,  and  which  in- 
terest only  the  critic  and  the  scholar. 

With  Alfred  Tennyson,  though  he  died  only  seven- 
teen years  ago,  the  sifting  process  has  begun.  In 
fact,  it  may  be  said  to  have  begun  before  his  death. 
His  own  ambition  was  to  write  historical  dramas,  and 
he  did  write  three  which  can  be  admired  from  many 
points  of  view ;  yet  they  failed  when  acted  in  the 
theatre.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  this  fate  befell  them 
because  they  were  written  in  Tennyson's  old  age.  A 
little  poem  which  he  published  only  three  years  be- 
fore his  death,  and  which  was  set  to  music  by  Leve- 
son-Gower,  struck  an  answering  chord  all  over  the 
English  world,  and  is  very  sure  of  immortality.  This 
is  Crossing  the  Bar,  two  stanzas  of  which  could 
have  been  written  by  no  one  save  Tennyson — a  master 
of  that  artistic  simplicity  which  blends  melody  and 
feeling  within  the  compass  of  a  few  naturally  uttered 
words  that  every  one  can  understand. 

But  surh  a  title  a<?,  movinpr,  seems  asleep, 

Too   full   for  sound   and   foam, 
When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 

Turns  again  home. 

Twilifrht  and  rveninp  hell, 

And    aftf-r    that    the    dark! 
And   may   there   he  no  sadness  of   farewell 

When  I   cml)ark. 


70      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

These  arc  almost  the  last  lines  that  Tennyson  ever 
wrote.  On  the  day  of  his  death  the  present  writer 
was  in  London,  and  it  seemed  as  if  nearly  every  human 
being  had  in  his  hands  the  words  of  this  infinitely 
appealing  poem.  It  will  be  noted  tliat  it  is  a  lyric. 
Tennyson's  fame,  indeed,  began  when  he  gave  the 
world  his  first  book  in  1830 — a  slender  little  volume 
entitled  Poems  Chief!  1/  Lyrical;  and  his  last  poetic 
breath,  so  to  speak,  sought  instinctively  a  lyrical  ex- 
pression. To-day  this  greatest  poet  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  admired  for  many  splendid  achievements ; 
but  I  believe  that  in  the  end,  when  the  Inexorable 
process  of  time  shall  have  eaten  away  the  memory 
of  what  many  now  think  to  be  his  finest  work,  there 
will  remain,  as  an  imperishable  part  of  English  liter- 
ature, those  poems  which  are  "  chiefly  lyrical." 

The  lyric  Is  the  most  Interesting  form  of  poetry 
that  we  have.  It  affects  more  human  beings  than  any 
other  kind.  It  Is  elemental.  It  Is  undoubtedly  the 
first  type  of  poetry  that  was  ever  evolved,  the  type 
out  of  which  sprang  all  the  others.  For  what  Is  the 
lyric  when  you  come  to  analyse  it?  It  Is  the  simplest 
end  most  natural  literary  expression  of  unmixed  emo- 
tion— usually  the  emotion  of  an  individual.  It  may 
be  personal,  or  religious,  or  amatory,  or  patriotic; 
but  in  the  beginning  it  must  have  been  removed  by 
only  one  stage  from  cries,  ejaculations,  shouts — 
primitive  expressions  of  pure  feeling.  Now,  just  as, 
all  over  the  world,  a  cry  of  passion  or  of  pain  Is 


THE    LYRICS    OF    TENNYSON  71 

understood  by  every  human  being,  so  is  the  lyric 
the  nearest  Hterary  representative  of  an  inarticuhite 
cry.  It  began  probably,  as  soon  as  language  did,  in 
simple  lines  and  with  a  short  refrain.  It  gradually 
developed  into  a  longer  and  more  artificial  kind  of 
verse.  But  because  it  represents  feeling  rather  than 
complex  thought,  it  goes  straightest  and  surest  to 
tl;e  human  heart.  Men  and  women  who  care  nothing 
for  any  other  sort  of  poetry  instinctively  love  the 
lyric  in  some  of  its  many  forms,  as  the  old  fa- 
miliar "  pennyroyal  hymns  "  of  the  New  Englander, 
or  the  patriotic  song,  or  the  love  poem,  or  the  battle 
chant — all  the  way  up  the  scale  of  genius  from  Wes- 
ley to  Campbell,  and  from  Campbell  to  Burns  and 
Longfellow  and  Tennyson.  The  lyric  speaks  out 
from  the  heart  the  things  which  belong  to  every 
nature;  and  thus  it  is  the  most  primitive  kind  of 
poetry. 

Hence,  I  think  that  if  Tennyson  was  the  greatest 
English  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century,  this  was  not 
Ijecause  of  his  dramas,  or  his  id^'ls,  or  any  half-fan- 
tastic poems  such  as  the  narrative  part  of  Tlic 
Princess;  but  because  his  genius  at  its  very  highest 
was  neither  dramatic  nor  epic,  but  lyrical.  Ho  caught 
the  car  of  the  public  first  with  such  wonderful  bits 
of  harmony  as  Airy,  Fairjj  Lilian  and  Mariano;  and 
soon  afterward  the  whole  Englisli-spcaking  world 
was  wondering  over  the  exquisitely  undulating  lines 
of  Loclxsley  Hall,  almost  every  couplet  of  which  is 


72      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

a  golden  memory  to  lovers  of  pure  poetry.  Just  one 
phrase  in  it  seems  to  describe  the  whole  cluster  of 
Tennysonian  lyrics,  which 

Glitter  like  a  swarm  of  fireflies  tangled  in  a  silver  braid. 

Can  any  of  the  following  lines  ever  be  forgotten 
while  the  English  language  lasts  ? 

Love  took  up  the  glass  of  Time,  and  turned  it  in  his  glow- 
ing hands; 

Every  moment,  lightly  shaken,  ran  itself  in  golden  sands. 

Love  took  up  the  harp  of  life,  and  smote  on  all  the  chords 
with  might; 

Smote  the  chord  of  Self,  that,  trembling,  passed  in  music 
out  of  sight. 

Knowledge  comes,  but  wisdom  lingers,  and  I  linger  on  the 

shore, 
And    the    individual    withers,    and    the    world    is    more    and 

more. 

Greek  and  more  than  Greek  is  the  choric  song 
which  forms  a  part  of  The  Lotos-Eaters.  It  seems 
to  me  that  nothing  in  any  language  can  surpass  the 
almost  cloying  sweetness  of  these  lines. 

How  sweet  it  were,  hearing  the  downward  stream, 

"With  half-shut  eyes  ever  to  seem 

Falling  asleep  in  a  half-dream  f 

To  dream  and  dream,  like  yonder  amber  light. 

Which  will  not  leave  the  myrrh-bush  on  the  height; 


THE    LYRICS    OF    TENNYSON  73 

To  hear  each  other's  whisper'd  speech; 
Eating  the  lotos  day  by  day, 
To  watch  the  crisping  ripples  on  the  beach. 
And  tender  curving  lines  of  creamy  spray. 

In  quite  another  strain  is  Lady  Clara  Vere  d€  Vere. 
It  appeals  to  honest  manhood  with  all  that  noble  in- 
dependence which  thrills  through  the  most  famous 
lyric  of  Robert  Bums.  One  single  stanza  of  Tenny- 
son sums  up  the  creed  of  that  true  aristocracy  which 
is  not  of  blood  but  of  achievement  and  high  char- 
acter : 

Howe'er  it  be,  it  seems  to  me, 

'  Tis   only   noble   to   be   good. 
Kind   hearts    are  more   than   coronets, 

And  simple  faith  than  Norman  blood. 

The  deep  yet  profoundly  thoughtful  melancholy 
of  In  Memoriam  is  shot  through  with  glimpses  of 
nature  which  show  one  "  the  pleasant  fields  and 
farms,"  the  little  shallop  "  at  anchor  in  the  flood 
below,"  the  grey  old  grange,  the  sheep-walk  on  the 
wold,  "  the  runlet  tinkling  from  the  rocks  " — 

Till  from  the  pardon  and  the  wild, 
A   fresh  association  blows. 

Besides  this  there  are  such  memorably  impressive 
lines  as  the  two  which  make  loom  before  us: 

The  shadow  cloaked  from  head  to  foot 
That  keeps  the  keys  of  all  the  creeds; 


7i      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

vrhWc  toward  the  end  of  the  poem  comes  that  famous 
lyrical  outburst  of  hope  and  prophecy : 

Ring  out  the  old,  ring  in  the  new. 
Ring   happy   bells,   across   the   snow: 
The  year  is  going, — let  him  go; 

Ring  out  the  false,  ring  in  the  true. 

Ring  in  the  valiant  man   and  free. 
The  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand; 
Ring  out  the  darkness  of  the  land. 

Ring  in  the  Christ  that  is  to  be ! 

What  shall  one  say  of  the  marvellous  lyrics  which 
glitter  throughout  The  Princess?  They  have  no  di- 
rect relation  to  the  theme  of  the  main  poem,  but  they 
are  jewels  of  song  with  which  nothing  else  in  Eng- 
lish can  be  compared.  I  should  like  to  quote  them 
here,  yet  they  are  too  well  known.  Who  does  not 
recall  Home  They  Brought  Her  Warrior  Dead,  and 
The  Bugle  Song,  and  Sweet  and  Low,  and  Tears, 
Idle  Tears,  than  which  music  can  afford  nothing 
more  melodious,  and  poetry  nothing  more  fragrant 
of  delicate  suggestion? 

It  is  odd  that  no  one  seems  to  have  noted  how 
deeply  indebted  to  Tennyson's  art  Is  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling In  those  ballads  of  Kipling's  which  rise  above 
the  strife  and  clamour  of  the  barrack-room  and  dis- 
play the  deeper  feeling  that  is  always  hidden  some- 
where in  the  Anglo-Saxon  nature.  Tennyson's  deftly 
managed  alliteration,  his  bold  simplicity  of  phrase, 


THE    LYRICS    OF    TENNYSON  75 

his  compactness,  and  his  high-strung  spirit,  are  all 
to  be  detected  in  Kipling  when  at  his  best.  Kipling 
is  not  a  copyist  of  Tennyson,  but  he  has  felt  Tenny- 
son's influence  very  deeply.  If  we  did  not  already 
know  that  these  eight  lines  were  written  by  the  lau- 
reate, we  should  without  any  hesitation  ascribe  them 
to  the  author  of  The  Recessional: 

Thy   voice    is   heard    through    rolling   drums, 
That  beat  to  battle  where  he  stands; 

Thy  face  across  his  fancy  comes, 
And  gives  the  battle  to  his  hands: 

A  moment,  while  the  trumpets  blow, 

He  sees  his  brood  about  his  knee; 
The  next,  like  fire  he  meets  the  foe — 

And  strikes  him  for  thine  and  thee! 

It  is  almost  certain,  too,  that  Swinburne  learned 
much  of  his  art  from  Tennyson.  Indeed,  he  may  be 
described  as  a  sensual  Tennyson,  as  Kipling  may  be 
called  a  ruder,  rougher  Tennyson. 

Tcnnj'son  was  markedly  an  English  type.  No 
poet  in  our  time  has  probably  been  so  truly 
English  as  was  Alfred  Tennyson.  In  his  veins 
there  ran  the  blood  of  the  three  great  peoples 
whose  gradual  union  made  England  what  it  is  and 
what  it  has  been  for  the  past  thousand  years.  His 
father's  family  was  of  Danish  extraction,  descended 
from  the  invaders  who  occupied  the  north  of  England 
in  King  Alfred's  time.     Upon  his  mother's  side  there 


76      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

were  French  ancestors  to  represent  the  Norman  in- 
fluence. These  two  elements  in  every  century  had 
been  blended  with  the  pure  Saxon  strain. 

Hence,  Tennyson  himself  was  almost  an  epitome 
of  the  English  race,  and  his  poetry  shows  signs  of 
each  of  the  three  racial  influences.  From  the  French 
blood  that  was  in  him  he  derived  his  perfect  clarity, 
his  flexibility  of  diction,  and  his  appreciation  of  the 
exact  and  fitting  word.  From  the  Danish  strain 
came  the  eery  picturesqueness,  the  touch  of  North- 
ern wildness  which  are  found  here  and  there  glim- 
mering through  his  poetry.  From  the  Anglo-Saxon 
came  the  strength  and  sturdiness,  and  the  enduring 
power  which  bound  all  the  other  qualities  together. 

In  the  Idyls  of  the  King,  the  French  and  Danish 
traits  predominate;  but  it  is  the  Saxon  that  we  see 
most  clearly  in  such  domestic,  homely  poems  as  The 
May  Queen,  and  Enoch  Arden,  and  in  the  rough, 
stirring,  hard-hitting,  irregular  metre  of  The  Charge 
of  the  Light  Brigade.  This  last  poem,  it  is  interest- 
ing to  know,  was  struck  off^  at  a  white  heat  imme- 
dio/cely  after  reading  in  the  London  Times  an  ac- 
count of  the  charge  at  Balaklava.  In  the  newspaper 
despatch,  Tennyson  noted  the  phrase  "  some  one  had 
blundered,"  and  this  phrase  gave  him  alike  his  in- 
spiration and  the  metrical  scheme  of  the  poem.  Oddly 
enough,  this  is  the  line  which  was  most  criticised  at 
the  time.  In  the  mid-Victorian  period,  literary  taste 
was    rather    finical;    and    the    blunt    phrasing    was 


THE    LYRICS    OF    TENNYSON  77 

thought  to  be  a  blemish  on  the  poem.  Yet  both  m 
movement  and  in  sound  it  fits  in  admirably  with  the 
rest,  suggesting,  as  it  does,  the  rhythmic  gallop 
and  the  thunder  of  the  horses'  hoofs. 

It  was  not  often,  however,  that  Tennyson  wrote 
so  rapidly.  His  Idyls  of  the  King  was  planned  by 
him  as  early  as  1830;  but  not  until  after  more  than 
twenty  years  did  he  publish  a  first  instalment  of 
the  poem.  Not  for  another  period  of  thirty  years 
did  he  finish  the  twelve  books,  and  thus  round  out  one 
of  the  noblest  monuments  of  our  literature.  So,  too. 
In  Memoriam  is  a  growth,  an  evolution,  since  the 
stanzas  of  it  were  written  at  many  different  times 
and  places.  This  poem,  more  than  any  other  of  the 
Tcnnysonian  cycle,  is  lyrical  in  the  broadest  sense  of 
the  word ;  for  here,  although  the  author  speaks  in  his 
own  person  and  of  a  personal  grief,  he  regards  him- 
self as  doing  so  in  terms  of  the  Universal ;  and,  as 
he  once  described  it,  "  the  voice  of  the  whole  human 
race  is  speaking  through  him." 

The  Saxon  side  of  Tennyson  came  out  most 
strongly  in  his  private  intercourse  with  those  who 
knew  him  best.  This  master  of  the  most  delicate  har- 
monics spoke  with  a  Lincolnshire  burr.  His  vocabu- 
lary was  full  of  common  words,  some  of  which  were 
often  coarse.  When  Longfellow  visited  him,  the  sen- 
sitive New  Kngland  poet  was  disturbed  by  the  broad- 
ness of  the  stories  which  Tennyson  told  liim  and  by 
the  rouglincss  of  his  manners,  for  whicli,  indtid.  Ten- 


78      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

nyson  afterward  apologised  in  a  letter.  All  this  repre- 
sented the  yeoman  side  of  his  nature,  and  it  was  won- 
derfully characteristic  of  the  Englishman.  Yet  it 
really  sprang  from  his  intense  individuality,  and  is 
therefore  of  itself  significant.  In  it  we  see  just  why 
the  highest  form  of  poetical  expression  is  the  lyri- 
cal ;  for  the  lyric,  as  I  have  already  said,  is  the 
spontaneous  expression  of  a  strongly  dominant 
individualism. 


LONGFELLOW 


LONGFELLOW 

What  sort  of  human  being  is  the  typical  Ameri- 
can? There  are  Americans  of  the  East  and  of  the 
West,  of  the  North  and  of  the  South,  and  they  are 
distinguished  from  one  another  by  all  kinds  of  ex- 
ternal traits ;  so  that  superficial  observers  have  said 
that  there  is  no  single  American  type  at  all.  This 
would  be  true  if  we  considered  only  habits  of  speech, 
local  customs,  and  perhaps  idiosyncrasies  of  manner. 
But  these  things  are  of  the  surface  only.  Ls  there 
not  somewhere,  deep  down,  a  sentiment,  a  mode  of 
feeling,  a  temperamental  quality,  which  all  our  coun- 
trymen, taken  in  the  mass,  possess  in  common,  and 
which  enables  us  to  say  that,  after  all,  there  does 
exist  a  typical  American  and  an  American  ideal? 

Foreign  critics  are  apt  to  select  eccentric  traits 
which  are  sometimes  found  among  us  and  to  call 
them  national,  instead  of  accidental  and  individual. 
To  such  as  these  the  genuine  American  is  a  loud- 
mouthed braggart,  worshipping  bigness,  glorifying 
materialism,  and  caring  nothing  for  what  pertains  to 
beauty  or  for  what  belongs  to  the  spirit  and  the 
soul.  Very  lately  a  comment  like  this  was  made  upon 
us  by  two  Russians — Maxim  CJorky,  the  novelist,  and 
Gregory   IVIaxim,    the   sociologist.      Sometimes   such 

8i 


82      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

criticism  Is  accepted  as  true  even  by  our  own  coun- 
trymen, and  It  Is  exaggerated  with  that  perversely 
humorous  Instinct  which  so  many  Americans  possess. 
And  at  first  sight  there  is  much  to  justify  It.  As  a 
people  we  do  undoubtedly  love  to  see  things  done 
upon  an  enormous  scale.  We  are  eager  for  success, 
for  material  prosperity,  for  money,  and  for  power. 
But,  after  all,  are  these  the  things  for  which  Ameri- 
cans care  most?  Is  there  not  another  side  more  sub- 
tle, more  profound,  and  less  obvious  to  the  casual 
eye  than  mere  noise  and  tumult  and  concrete  Im- 
mensity? It  Is  not  to  stock  exchanges  and  manufac- 
turing establishments,  or  to  the  pulsing  heart  of 
cities,  that  one  ought  to  go  In  quest  of  what  Is  most 
indicative  of  the  character  of  any  people.  Of  the 
eighty  millions  of  our  countrymen  and  country- 
women, only  a  comparatively  few  are  dragged  Into 
the  vortex  of  this  struggle  for  life;  and  even  those 
who  are  engaged  In  It  have  times  and  seasons  in 
which  they  can  be  themselves,  and  find  leisure  for 
what  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  called  "  pleasure  trips 
into  the  Land  of  Thought,"  where,  as  Burns  said, 
there  are  hours  for  "  happy  thinking." 

The  genuine  characteristics  of  the  nation  may  be 
tested  In  many  ways ;  but  the  test  of  literature  alone 
is  very  striking,  and  ought  to  bear  conviction  with  it. 
If  Americans  were  in  reality  a  people  of  strident 
voice,  of  crass  materialism,  and  of  a  thinly  disguised 
brutality,  their  favourite  poet  should  beyond  all  ques- 


LONGFELLOW  83 

tion  be  Walt  Whitman.  Whitman  of  the  red  shirt 
and  unkempt  hair,  Whitman  despising  all  conven- 
tionalities, Whitman  glorifying  hugeness,  and,  as 
he  said,  "  sounding  his  barbaric  yawp  over  the  house- 
tops " — surely  here  is  the  poet  who  would  make  an 
instantaneous  appeal  to  that  typical  American  whom 
foreigners  believe  that  they  have  seen.  He  was,  as 
Sidney  Lanier  admirably  expressed  it,  "  poetry's 
butcher,"  offering  as  food  "  huge  raw  collops  cut 
from  the  rump  of  poetry,"  arguing  that  because  a 
Western  prairie  is  wide,  therefore,  debauchery  is  ad- 
mirable, and  because  the  Mississippi  is  long,  there- 
fore, every  American  is  a  god. 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact.  Whitman's  poetry,  if  it 
can  so  be  called,  tells  of  those  national  traits  wlaich 
are  only  on  the  surface.  That  he  speaks  with  elo- 
quence and  power,  at  times,  is  undeniable.  When  he 
pictures  a  great  locomotive  in  winter,  plunging  its 
way  through  the  snowstorm,  and  apostrophises  it  as 

Fierce-lhroated   beauty! 

Roll  through  my  chant  with  all  tliy  lawless  music, 

he  is  superb.  And,  too,  when  in  the  great  Platte 
Canon  of  Colorado  he  describes 

These   tumbled    rock-piles,  prim   and   rod. 
These    reckless   heaven-ambitious   peaka. 
These   gorges,   turbulent-clear   streams, 

he  is  again  superb,  and  undoubtedly  American.     In 


81.      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

a  sense,  also,  his  lawlessness,  his  glorification  of  him- 
self and  of  his  physical  desires,  compel,  at  times, 
one's  admiration.  They  are  so  unfettered,  so  defiant, 
and  so  magnificently  insolent. 

Yet,  at  heart,  the  American  of  reality  is  not  the 
American  whom  Whitman  knew.  The  true  Ameri- 
can's ideal  is  not  found  in  a  machine  of  iron  and 
brass,  however  powerful  it  may  be.  His  love  of  na- 
ture is  not  stirred  merely  by  gigantic  and  misshapen 
products  of  volcanic  convulsion.  His  love  of  woman 
is  not  satisfied  by  the  purchased  favours  of  a  strum- 
pet. And  so,  as  a  matter  of  actual  fact.  Whitman 
has  never  been  very  widely  read  by  his  own  country- 
men. Curiously  enough,  his  most  numerous  admirers 
are  to  be  found  among  aliens  who  imagine  him  to  be 
American  just  because  he  is  blatant  and  boastful 
and  grotesque.  His  praises  have  been  loudest  sung 
by  foreign  poets,  such  as  Swinburne,  in  whom  the 
erratic  and  the  erotic  are  ingeniously  interwoven,  and 
who  look  upon  this  transatlantic  roisterer  as  they 
would  look  upon  any  freak  of  nature,  because  it  is 
something  strange  and  novel  and,  therefore,  interest- 
ing. But  the  America  of  Whitman  is  neither  that  of 
Washington,  with  his  grave  dignity,  nor  of  Frank- 
lin, with  his  quiet  humour  and  good  sense,  nor  of 
Lincoln,  underneath  whose  uncouth  exterior  were 
hidden  nobility  and  tenderness. 

The  true  American  laureate,  the  poet  of  our  peo- 
ple, and  in   a  sense  of  the  whole  English-speaking 


LONGFELLOW  85 

race,  is  Longfellow,  born  little  more  than  a  century 
ago.  No  one  could  be  more  utterly  unlike  the  crude 
conception  of  the  American ;  yet  no  one  else  has 
written  lines  that  have  sunk  so  deepl}-  down  into  the 
national  consciousness,  making  their  strong  appeal 
to  men  and  women  of  every  rank  and  station,  and 
of  every  degree  of  culture  and  refinement. 

In  England  he  has  been  more  read  than  Tennyson. 
His  bust  is  in  the  Poets'  Corner  of  Westminster  Ab- 
bey. In  the  United  States  he  has,  for  fifty  years  at 
least,  stood  first,  and  with  no  rival.  His  lines  are 
recited  in  the  country  school;  they  are  read  in  the 
remote  farmhouse;  they  arc  part  and  parcel  of  the 
intellectual  equipment  of  every  man  of  letters.  Yet 
Longfellow  is  the  very  antithesis  of  Whitman.  His 
verses  are,  for  the  most  part,  as  smooth  and  as  mu- 
sical as  the  other's  are  rough  and  formless.  Their 
beauty  is  as  exquisite  as  the  ugliness  of  much  that 
Whitman  wrote  is  startling  and  repellent.  Critics 
sometimes  say  that  Longfellow  lacks  vigour  and  vi- 
rility; but  in  such  poems  as  The  Skeleton  in  Ar- 
mour, in  his  Norse  ballads,  and  in  The  Building  of 
the  Ship,  one  may  hear  the  roar  and  thunder  of 
the  sea  and  feel  the  daring  spirit  of  the  primitive 
man  who  is  elemental  in  his  emotions,  yet  who,  never- 
theless, stands  far  above  the  brutes  that  perish.  Lis- 
ten to  these  stanzas,  for  example,  which  are  familiar 
yet  ever  new : 


86      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Then  launched  they  to  the  blast. 
Bent  like  a  reed  each  mast, 
Yet  we  were   gaining   fast. 

When  the  wind   failed  us; 
And  with  a  sudden  flaw 
Came  round  the  gusty  skaw, 
So   that  our  foe  we  saw 

Laugh  as  he  hailed  us. 

And  as  to  catch  the  gale 
Round  veered  the  flapping  sail. 
Death !   was  the  helmsman's  hail. 

Death  without  quarter! 
Mid-ships  with  iron  keel 
Struck  we  her  ribs  of  steel; 
Down  her  black  hulk  did  reel 

Through  the  black  water! 

And   for  conveying    the    dour    strength   of  the 
primitive  man,  what  could  be  better  than  this  from 
The  Saga  of  King  Olaf: 

Ploughing  under  the  morning  star, 
Old  Iron-Beard  in  Yriar 
Heard  the  summons,  chuckling  with  a  low  laugh. 

He  wiped  the  sweat-drops  from  his  brow. 

Unharnessed  his  horses  from  the  plough, 

And  clattering  came  on  horseback  to   King  Olaf. 

He  was  the  churliest  of  the  churls; 
Little  he  cared  for  king  or  earls; 
Bitter  as  home-brewed  ale  were  his  foaming  passions. 

Hodden-grey  was  the  garb  he  wore. 
And  by  the  Hammer  of  Thor  he  swore. 
He  hated  the  narrow  town,  and  all  its  fashions. 


LONGFELLOW  87 

Small  wonder  that  In  Kipling's  curiously  fascinat- 
ing tale,  The  Finest  Story  in  the  World,  Charlie 
]\Iears,  the  undersized,  underbred,  cockney  bank- 
clerk,  In  whom  are  reincarnated  the  viking  and  the 
Greek  galley-slave,  should  be  roused  to  a  dim  con- 
sciousness of  his  former  lives  by  hearing  these  Norse 
poems  of  Longfellow,  and  that  for  a  moment  he 
should  get  a  vanishing  glimpse  of  an  existence  which 
he  had  led  centuries  before,  shackled  to  the  seat  of  a 
rocking,  sea-tossed  ship  under  the  savage,  red-haired, 
red-bearded  chieftain  who  steered  straight  through 
surging  waves  to  Furdurstrandi  and  the  "  Long  and 
Wonderful  Beaches."  Longfellow  could,  Indeed,  at 
times  use  English  with  the  same  rude  strength  which 
belonged  to  Tennyson,  as  when  the  latter  wrote  in 
Enid: 

The  brawny  spearman  turned   and  let  his  cheek 
Bulge   with   th'   unswallowed   piece. 

Perhaps  this  is  why  Tennyson  was  a  little  jealous 
of  Longfellow,  who  could  almost  match  him  in  so 
many  ways. 

But  where  Longfellow  is  inferior  to  Tennyson 
is  in  having  only  a  very  superficial  knowledge 
of  classical  literature,  while  Tennyson  is  vocal 
with  faintly  charming  echoes  from  the  Romans  and 
the  Greeks.  It  was  a  ratlicr  tenicrarioiis  venture 
of    Lnngffllow    to    essay    the    dactylic    hexameter 


88      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

in  writing  Evangeline  and  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish.  In  a  sense,  the  attempt  has  been  justi- 
fied, and  may  be  said  almost  to  have  grafted  that 
splendid  measure  on  our  poetry ;  so  much  is  there  in 
these  poems  of  his  that  delights  the  car  and  makes 
pictures  before  the  mind.  Yet  on  the  whole,  Longfel- 
low's hexameters  are  not  very  good.  One  willingly 
accepts  the  accentual  system  in  place  of  the  quanti- 
tative, for  this  we  find  also  in  the  later  Latin  writers. 
What  Longfellow,  however,  seems  not  to  have  under- 
stood is  that  if  you  write  accentual  poetry  you 
must  abide  strictly  by  its  laws.  The  verse  must 
"  read  itself,"  quite  as  easily  as  any  other  kind  of 
verse,  and  must  not  compel  us  to  lay  stress  on  sylla- 
bles which  would  not  be  stressed  in  prose.  Professor 
C.  E.  Bennett,  writing  of  Latin  poetry,  says  what  is 
also  true  of  English :  "  Anyone  who  can  read  prose 
with  accuracy  and  with  fluency  has  no  difficulty  in 
reading  poetry.  The  poet  arranges  the  words  in 
such  wise  that  they  make  poetry  of  themselves  if 
they  are  only  properly  pronounced.  No  other  kind 
of  poetry  was  ever  known  in  any  language.  No 
other  is  conceivable."  But  in  Longfellow's  hexam- 
eters we  are  too  often  compelled  to  place  the  accent 
incorrectly  in  order  to  make  out  the  line.  That  is, 
the  verse  becomes  poetry  only  when  improperly  pro- 
nounced. Thus,  again  and  again  in  Evangeline, 
there  are  lines  w^hich  begin  with  little  unaccented 
words  like  "  and,"  "  as,"  and  with  pronouns  which 


LONGFELLOW  89 

are  not  emphatic.     Take,  for  example,  such  hexam- 
eters as  these: 

As    apart   by   the    window   she   stood,   with   her   hand   in   her 

lover's. 
Blushing    Evangeline    heard    the    words    that   her    father   had 

spoken ; 
And  as  they  died  on  his  lips  the  worthy  notary  entered. 

Now  in  the  first  of  these  three  hexameters,  we  are 
obliged  to  stress  the  word  "  as,"  although  we  should 
not  stress  it  in  prose.  Yet  unless  we  do  so  here,  the 
first  foot  is  a  pyrrhic  instead  of  a  pseudo-spondee 
(trochee)  as  Longfellow  meant  it  to  be.  In  the  last 
hexameter,  unless  we  strongly  stress  the  initial  word 
"  and  " — which  we  should  never  think  of  doing  in 
prose — we  get  a  tribrach  in  place  of  a  dactyl.  In- 
deed, Longfellow  had  little  understanding  of  the 
classic  metres  except  such  as  came  to  him  by  ear, 
imperfectly.  On  one  occasion  he  composed,  in  a  hu- 
morous vein,  an  elegiac  couplet  in  English ;  and  in  the 
second  half  of  the  pentameter  he  introduced  a  spon- 
dee, whereas  the  classic  rule  is  a  rigid  one  in  requir- 
ing two  dactyls  after  the  caesura. 

Much  of  what  he  wrote  has  been  so  often  quoted 
and  so  many  times  recited  as  to  seem,  it  may  be, 
trite;  but  his  Psalm  of  Life,  and  even  the  imperfect 
st'inzas  of  Excelsior,  have  power  to  stir  the  blood; 
and  what  is  more,  they  point  always  upward  to  a 
noble  and  inspiring  ideal  of  human  life — a  life  that 
is   more   than    tlie   life   of   the   flesh,   since    it    means 


90      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

strenuous  effort  and  high  endeavour  toward  truth 
and  righteousness  and  justice.  Indeed,  here  Is  the 
essential  distinction  between  Wliitman  and  Long- 
fellow. The  former  never  saw  the  moral  background 
of  our  daily  life ;  the  latter  never  failed  to  sec  it  and 
to  make  his  readers  see  it.  Whitman  finds  in  cattle 
a  rather  admirable  type  of  the  existence  which 
pleased  him,  since  cattle  "  never  have  to  be  respect- 
able." Longfellow,  on  the  other  hand,  with  courage 
and  manliness,  exclaims : 

Be  not  like  dumb  driven  cattle — 
Be  a  hero  in  the  strife  1 

It  Is,  however.  In  another  sphere  that  Longfellow 
draws  closest  to  the  inner  heart  of  those  for  whom  he 
wrote.  This  is  the  sphere  of  what  has  lately  come  to 
be  known  as  "  the  simple  life."  Here  the  poet's  eye 
can  see  the  fineness  and  the  charm  of  what  belongs  to 
every-day  experience.  The  village  blacksmith,  swart 
and  strong  beside  his  forge,  where  the  flames  flare 
out  from  the  blown  fire,  and  the  sparks  leap  in  corus- 
cating cascades  as  his  hammer  smites  the  red-hot 
metal  on  the  anvil ;  the  wreck  of  the  coasting  vessel 
overwhelmed  by  mountainous  billows  while  the  cap- 
tain's daughter  prays  to  the  Christ  who  stilled  the  sea 
at  Galilee;  the  old  clock  chiming  on  the  stairs;  the 
hanging  of  the  crane  in  the  new  home;  the  musing 
figure  on  the  historic  bridge — here  are  themes  which 
in  their  usual  aspect  are  quite  commonplace,  but 
which  under  Longfellow's  magic  touch  have  become 


LONGFELLOW  91 

instinct  with  an  exquisite  beauty  to  which  he  has 
opened  every  reader's  eyes. 

]More  than  all,  it  is  Longfellow's  sympathy  with 
children  and  with  women  that  gives  him  the  firmest 
hold  upon  his  countrymen.  There  are  the  quietly 
playful  verses  of  The  Children's  Hour,  when  the  poet 
is  made  a  willing  prisoner  by  the  laughing  little  elves 
who  swarm  into  his  study  and  take  him  captive. 
There  are  the  blind  girl  of  Castel-Cuille,  and  the 
sleeping  child  for  whose  waking  smile  the  father 
watches,  fearful  lest  it  may  be  dead  and  not  asleep. 
There  are  the  happy  children  who  play  upon  the  stairs 
about  the  ancient  clock,  and  there  are  the  villajre  ur- 
chins  who,  coming  home  from  school,  look  in  at  the 
doorway  and  watch  the  blacksmith  at  his  task. 

When  Longfellow  thinks  of  women  he  thinks  of 
them  as  the  native-born  American  always  thinks  of 
them — whether  he  be  a  clergyman  or  a  cowboy — with 
reverence  and  respect.  One  sees  the  poet  smile  with 
quiet  amusement  at  the  charmingly  coquettish  girl  of 
whom  he  writes,  almost  as  Horace  wrote  of  Pyrrha, 
"  Trust  her  not,  she's  fooling  thee  " ;  and  again  he 
makes  us  feel  and  see  the  grace  and  glory  of  that  mo- 
ment when  she  who  is  no  longer  girl  nor  yet  wholly 
woman,  but  is 

Standinp    with    reluctant    feet 
Where   the   hrook   nnd    river   meet. 

And  we  can  not  tuni  many  pages  without  coming 
upon  lines  both  tender  and  impassioned,  written  to  the 


92      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

wife  wlio  filled  his  home  with  a   radiant  gentleness 
that  made  of  it  an  earthly  paradise. 

In  a  larger  sense  is  Longfellow  to  be  regarded  as 
the  American  laureate.  Had  he  Avritten  only  his  three 
poems  of  Evangeline  and  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish  and  Himvatha,  he  would  still  have  rightly 
won  the  laurel  crown.  Through  these  poems  he  peo- 
pled the  waste  places  of  our  then  prosaic  land  with 
the  creations  of  his  fancy.  In  Hiawatha  he  stretched 
out  his  hand  and  set  the  mark  of  his  genius  upon 
the  West,  giving  us  a  poem  which  is  not  far  from 
being  an  epic,  sprung  from  the  soil  and  from  the 
forests  of  aboriginal  America.  He  had,  indeed,  the 
epic  poet's  gift  of  true  constructiveness.  As  Mr. 
Horace  Scudder  said  of  him,  "  He  was  first  of  all, 
a  composer,  and  he  saw  his  subjects  in  their  relation, 
rather  than  in  their  essence,"  though  he  saw  them 
in  their  essence,  too.  What  could  be  nobler,  and 
what  could  sound  more  perfectly  the  motif  of  Evan- 
geline, than  the  wonderful  proem  in  which  the  forest 
primeval  with  its  murmuring  trees,  its  long,  dim 
vistas,  and  the  far-off  disconsolate  accent  of  the 
ocean,  attune  our  minds,  as  it  were,  to  a  symphony 
in  which  unsophisticated  nature  and  the  sorrow  of 
love  are  curiously  and  poignantly  intermingled.'' 
Here  Longfellow  is  certainly  American  in  theme  and 
thought  alike ;  nor  is  there  any  trace  of  that  bas- 
tard Americanism  which  is  sordid,  or  boastful,  or 
ignoble. 


LONGFELLOW  93 

One  finds  the  same  type  of  Americanism — the  high- 
est and  therefore  the  most  representative  of  all — in 
Longfellow's  own  personality,  in  the  urbanity  of  his 
tone,  the  perfection  of  his  breeding,  and  the  fineness 
of  his  manner.  To  me,  one  of  the  most  striking  traits 
of  Longfellow  has  always  been  his  innate  gentility, 
which  must  have  come  first  of  all  from  nature,  and 
which  was  merely  fostered  and  ripened  by  the  circum- 
stances of  his  life.  Born  in  what  was  then  a  paro- 
chial country  settlement,  educated  at  a  provincial 
college,  and  finally  transferred  to  Cambridge,  which 
was  still  only  a  small,  self-conscious,  and  somewhat 
pedantic  community,  Longfellow  was  from  the  very 
first  not  only  a  man  of  refinement,  but  one  who  had 
that  indescribable  tone  and  feeling  which  come  to 
most  men  only  from  long  contact  with  the  world. 
His  early  letters  make  this  plain.  His  correspond- 
ence with  old  Josiah  Quincy,  then  president  of  Har- 
vard College,  shows  a  striking  contrast  between  two 
types  of  men.  Quincy  is  upright,  just,  and,  in  his 
narrow  way,  benignant ;  yet  he  is  after  all  a  subli- 
mated sort  of  schoolmaster;  while  Longfellow,  in 
what  he  writes,  reveals  in  every  line  the  courtesy  and 
taste  and  breeding  of  an  accomplished  gentleman 
whose  scholarship  is  but  one  of  his  claims  to  dis- 
tinction. 

His  life  was  like  his  poetry,  simple,  yet  beautifully 
true.  His  hospitality  was  gracious  and  unvarying ; 
and  his  historic  home  at  Cambridge  was  the  literary 


94.      STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Mecca  of  our  country.  Yet  he  was  not  aloof  from 
public  interests.  It  is  noted  by  one  of  his  biogra- 
phers that  he  always  voted  at  elections,  that  he  took 
a  keen  interest  in  local  affairs — that  he  was,  in  fact, 
a  good  citizen  as  well  as  a  great  poet.  With  all  this 
he  preserved  "  that  integrity  of  nature  which  never 
abdicates,"  and,  like  Emerson,  because  of  the  power 
of  his  personality,  "  he  dwelt  in  a  charmed  circle  be- 
yond the  lines  of  which  men  could  not  penetrate." 
The  thought  of  money-making  never  came  into  his 
mind;  and  though,  toward  the  end  of  his  life,  he  had 
a  comfortable  income,  he  made  no  change  in  the  man- 
ner of  his  living.  For  many  years  he  was  what  most 
men  to-day  would  call  quite  poor;  and  it  is  related 
by  a  friend  of  his  that  he  felt  himself  exceedingly 
well  off  when  he  had  in  the  bank  so  large  a  sum  as 
eight  hundred  dollars. 

In  all  this  he  seems  to  be  the  type  of  the  American 
citizen — American  not  merely  in  his  poetic  themes, 
but  in  the  homelike  qualities  of  his  existence.  His 
personal  dignity,  his  quiet  humour — of  which  he  pos- 
sessed an  abundant  store — his  love  of  what  is  sane 
and  wholesome,  his  cordial  friendships,  and  his  united 
household — all  these  together  sum  up  the  things 
which,  as  we  like  to  think,  belong  to  the  American 
ideal  of  what  life  means.  When  his  bust  was  placed 
within  the  consecrated  walls  of  Westminster  Abbey, 
his  friend  and  fellow-poet  spoke  of  him  some  words 
that  should  not  be  forgotten.    Lowell  said:   "  Never 


LONGFELLOW  95 

have  I  known  a  more  beautiful  character.  I  was 
familiar  with  it  daily — with  the  constant  charity  of 
his  hand  and  of  his  mind.  His  nature  was  conse- 
crated ground,  into  which  no  unclean  spirit  could 
ever  enter." 

Hence,  it  Is  not  wrong  to  say  that  in  Longfellow 
we  find  the  traits  which,  notwithstanding  an  as- 
sumed indifference  or  bravado,  Americans  at  heart 
most  value.  His  is  not  a  personal  ideal,  but  an  ideal 
that  is  national.  And  rightly  so  ;  since  when  we  grasp 
the  highest  possible  conception  of  our  republic  it  is 
not  to  be  found  in  a  sordid  herding  together  of  the 
uncouth  and  the  avaricious,  since  of  all  forms  of 
government  a  republic  must  depend — to  quote  Lanier 
once  more — upon  the  self-control  and  the  fitness  for 
rule  of  its  every  member.  "  You  can  not  make  a  re- 
public out  of  muscles  and  prairies  and  rocky  moun- 
tains. Republics  are  made  of  the  spirit."  And  of 
our  American  republic  the  essential,  vivifying  spirit 
speaks  with  clear,  unerring  tones  in  all  the  lines  and 
through  the  voice  of  Longfellow. 


POE   AS   A   STORY-WRITER 


VI 

POE  AS  A  STORY-WRITER 

Of  those  who  admire  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  some  admire 
him  chiefly  as  a  poet,  while  others  admire  him  chiefly 
as  a  writer  of  prose.  If  we  analyse  both  his  poetry 
and  his  prose,  and  try  to  understand  the  true  nature 
of  his  genius,  we  shall  find  that  fundamentally  he  wag 
first  of  all  a  mathematician. 

Now  most  persons  think  of  a  mathematician  as  a 
mere  vulgar  weigher  and  measurer  and  calculator — 
a  very  prosaic  person,  utterly  devoid  of  all  imagina- 
tion. Poe  himself  seems  to  have  held  this  view;  for 
in  one  of  his  most  famous  stories — The  Purloined 
Letter — he  makes  his  ingenious  hero,  Dupin,  say  of 
another  character:  "As  a  mere  mathematician,  he 
could  not  have  reasoned  at  all."  And  then  he  goes 
on  to  remark  that  because  the  person  in  question 
was  both  a  poet  and  a  mathematician,  he  could  rea- 
son well,  and  was,  therefore,  a  very  dangerous 
opponent. 

Yet  Poe,  of  all  men,  should  have  known  that  imag- 
ination is  just  as  necessary  to  a  really  great  mathe- 
matician as  it  is  to  a  lyric  poet,  since  the  great 
mathematician  docs  not  limit  his  speculations  to 
finite  truths,  but  passes  into  transcendental  regions 
of  thought,  where  finite  truths  have  no  validity-     In 

99 


100    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

otlicr  words,  It  is  wrong  to  say,  as  Poe  does,  that  a 
mathematician  may  be  a  poet.  Rather  is  It  true  that 
a  great  mathematician  must  have  many  of  those 
qualities  of  mind  which  make  a  poet.  It  is  only  thus 
that  he  can  rise  above  the  finite  to  the  infinite,  and 
form  those  bold  conceptions  which  do  not,  indeed, 
belong  to  arithmetic  and  to  the  theorems  of  Euclid- 
ean geometry,  but  which  are  absolutely  vital  to  the 
higher  mathematics. 

That  Poe's  natural  bent  was  mathematical  is  seen 
in  many  facts.  Even  in  his  early  youth,  when  he  was 
a  cadet  at  West  Point — he  was  then  only  nineteen 
years  of  age — it  was  recorded  of  him  by  a  friend, 
*'  He  had  a  wonderful  aptitude  for  mathematics."  To- 
ward the  end  of  his  life,  disregarding  all  that  he  had 
previously  written  as  being  relatively  unimportant, 
he  planned  his  so-called  prose  poem.  Eureka,  which 
he  said  and  thought  to  be  his  strongest  claim  upon 
the  remembrance  of  posterity.  He  went  to  Mr.  Put- 
nam, the  publisher,  all  quivering  with  excitement, 
and  declared  that  this  prose  poem  was  of  momentous 
interest,  and  that  a  first  edition  of  fifty  thousand 
copies,  if  Mr.  Putnam  would  publish  it,  would  be 
only  a  small  and  inadequate  beginning.  Remember 
that  in  those  days  publishers  regarded  an  edition  of 
two  thousand  copies  as  a  large  one,  and  it  will  be 
plain  that  Poe  really  thought  this  book  to  be  his 
greatest  work.  In  his  preface  to  it  he  declares 
Eureka  to  be  "  an  art  product,"  and  says  that  only 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  101 

as  a  poem  does  he  wish  it  to  be  judged  after  he  is 
dead. 

Now,  what  is  this  Eureka,  on  which  Poe  desired 
to  rest  his  final  reputation  ?  It  is  a  work  of  minutely 
analytical  reasoning  of  the  most  abstract  character, 
intended  to  explain  the  process  of  creation  and  the 
constitution  of  the  universe.  In  it,  like  some  ancient 
Greek — Empedocles  or  Leucippus,  for  example — he 
discourses  of  primordial  atoms  thrown  off  in  a  num- 
ber directly  proportioned  to  the  surface  of  the  par- 
ticular sphere  which  they  had  occupied ;  and  he 
argues  that  since  the  surfaces  were  directly  propor- 
tioned to  the  squares  of  their  distances  from  the  cen- 
tre, the  radiating  force  was  directly  proportioned 
to  the  squares  of  the  distances  to  which  the  several 
atomic  showers  were  driven.  Poe  then  assumes  a 
recoil  of  the  atoms  and  a  tendency  which  represents 
the  mutual  attraction  of  atoms  with  a  force  inversely 
proportioned  to  the  squares  of  the  distances. 
Again,  in  some  still  later  papers,  he  busies  himself 
with  a  mathematical  explanation  of  Kepler's  plane- 
tary laws,  and  with  certain  mathematical  deduc- 
tions from  Newton's  theory  of  gravitation. 

In  all  this  complex  speculation  who  discovers  the 
author  of  The  Bells,  The  Haven,  and  The  Haunted 
Palace?  Wlio  readily  detects  the  mind  which  con- 
structed the  story  of  The  Gold  Iiu<:^,  or  The  Purloined 
Letter,  or  The  Murders  in  the  Hue  Morgue  ?  Appar- 
ently very  few.     Even  Professor  Woodberry,  in  his 


102    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

admirable  biography,  explains  these  scientific  la- 
bours as  "  showing  how  cgregiously  genius  may 
mistake  its  realm."  Yet  they  certainly  do  show  that 
Poe  felt  a  powerful  impulse  toward  mathematics  and 
the  related  sciences.  As  I  see  them,  the  same  qualities 
which  appear  in  Eureka  are  the  qualities  which  are 
conspicuous  in  his  poetry,  and  no  less  so  in  the 
stories  which  every  one  had  read,  though  no  one 
reads  Eureka.  In  the  present  chapter  I  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  poems ;  but  I  venture  to  propound  the 
thesis  that  both  the  merits  and  the  defects  of  Poe's 
short  stories  are  largely  traceable  to  the  fact  that 
their  author  was  before  all  else  a  mathematician, 
with  a  mathematician's  mind  and  temperament. 

Let  us  take  a  few  of  these  short  stories  by  way  of 
illustration.  First  of  all,  there  is  The  Purloined 
Letter,  of  which  the  hero,  Auguste  Dupin,  is  a  man 
saturated  with  mathematical  knowledge,  even  though 
he  has  a  species  of  contempt  for  algebraists  and 
geometricians.  To  him  comes  the  prefect  of  police, 
begging  his  assistance  to  recover  a  letter  which  is 
known  to  be  in  the  possession  of  a  minister  of  state, 
and  which  is  probably  in  the  house  of  the  minister; 
yet  which  the  most  minute  ransacking  of  the  house 
by  the  pohce  has  failed  to  bring  to  light.  Every  inch 
of  space  in  every  room  has  been  examined.  The  legs 
of  the  chairs  and  the  cushions  on  the  couches  have 
been  bored  into  or  ripped  open.  The  very  books  in 
the  library  have  been  taken  down  one  by  one;  each 
page  has  been  turned,  and  even  the  bindings  have 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  103 

been  tested.  The  prefect  is  in  despair ;  for  the  letter 
is  a  compromising  one,  and  its  possession  by  the 
minister  may  lead  to  serious  political  results. 

Dupin  listens,  says  very  little,  and  soon  the  pre- 
fect goes  away.  A  month  later  he  once  more  visits 
Dupin,  and  again  expresses  his  despair.  The  letter 
has  not  yet  been  found.  An  enormous  reward  has 
been  privately  offered  for  it.  The  prefect  would  him- 
self willingly  give  fifty  thousand  francs  to  any  one 
who  should  recover  it.  Then  Dupin,  who  has  been 
puffing  at  his  pipe,  tosses  a  cheque-book  to  the  pre- 
fect and  says: 

"  You  may  as  well  fill  me  up  a  cheque  for  the 
amount  mentioned.  When  you  have  signed  it  I  will 
hand  you  the  letter." 

Tlie  prefect  gasps  and  stares,  then  makes  out  a 
cheque  for  fifty  thousand  francs  and  gives  it  to 
Dupin.  Thereupon  Dupin  quietly  unlocks  a  writing- 
desk,  takes  out  the  missing  letter,  and  hands  it  over 
to  the  thunderstruck  official. 

This  is  an  extremely  interesting  and  dramatic 
story.  Merely  as  regards  incident,  it  is  absolutely 
perfect.  Then,  when  Dupin  comes  to  explain  how 
he  got  possession  of  the  letter  where  the  police  had 
failed,  his  explanation  is  a  beautiful  blending  of 
mathematics  and  psychology.  To  be  sure,  it  seems 
at  first  sight  to  be  a  criticism  of  mathematics,  yet 
it  is  just  the  sort  of  criticism  which  a  transcendental 
mathematician  would  bestow  upon  a  mathematician 
of  the  ordinary  type.     We  have  here,  in  reality,  a 


lot    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

suf^gcstion  of  mathematical  imagination  applied  to 
a  psychological  problem.  Dupin  has  read  the  mind 
both  of  the  prefect  of  police  and  of  the  minister,  and 
he  reasons  from  thought  to  action  with  the  close  logic 
of  the  advanced  mathematician.  By  so  doing  he  has 
been  able  to  arrive  at  a  solution  which  the  profes- 
sional detectives  absolutely  failed  to  hit  upon. 

Again,  there  is  the  story  of  The  Gold  Bug,  in 
which  the  discovery  of  a  hidden  treasure  depends 
upon  the  deciphering  of  a  cryptogram  composed  of 
numbers.  Cryptography  was  a  subject  in  which  Poe 
always  took  an  extraordinary  interest.  When  he  was 
connected  with  a  Philadelphia  periodical,  he  issued  a 
sort  of  challenge,  declaring  that  he  could  read  any- 
thing that  might  be  sent  to  him  written  in  cipher.  In 
consequence,  many  cryptograms  reached  him  from  all 
parts  of  the  country,  some  of  them  concocted  by  per- 
sons who  did  not  observe  the  conditions  of  the  chal- 
lenge, but  either  used  foreign  languages  or  blended 
several  alphabets  in  the  same  cipher,  or  even  ran 
words  and  sentences  together  without  any  indicated 
intervals.  Yet  Poe  solved  all  of  these  intricate  puz- 
zles, except  one  which  was  meaningless,  being  made 
up  of  a  jargon  based  upon  characters  used  at  ran- 
dom. 

Afterwards,  Poe  wrote  a  series  of  papers  on  Secret 
Writing,  which  appeared  in  the  pages  of  Graham's 
Magazine.  In  these  papers  he  analysed  the  methods 
by  which  cryptograms  could  be  deciphered,  and  he 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  105 

did  so  with  an  obvious  zest  in  that  sort  of  mathemat- 
ical trick-work.  In  all  this  we  see  the  mathema- 
tician at  play.  The  story  of  The  Gold  Bug  is 
written  around  a  cryptogram  just  as  his  poem,  The 
Raven,  was  built  up  around  the  single  word  "  Never- 
more." 

Another  famous  tale,  The  Mystery  of  Marie 
Rogct,  affords  a  still  more  extraordinary  instance  of 
Poe's  logical  and  mathematical  skill.  As  every  one 
is  aware,  a  young  girl  named  Mary  Cecilia  Rogers, 
well  known  in  New  York,  was  found  murdered  in 
Hobokcn.  The  police  were  unable  to  discover  any 
clue  to  the  mystery  of  her  death.  The  problem  baf- 
fled all  investigation.  Then,  Poe,  merely  from  put- 
ting together  the  facts  that  had  been  reported  in  the 
newspapers,  composed  a  story  in  which,  laying  the 
scene  in  Paris  and  substituting  French  names  and 
places  for  the  real  ones,  he  unravelled  the  tangled 
skein  of  evidence  and  explained  just  how  and  why  the 
murder  had  been  done. 

His  flawless,  relentless  reasoning  is  remarkable, 
and  the  story  itself  ends  with  a  paragraph  which  is 
essentially  mathematical,  referring  directly  to  the 
calculus  of  probabilities.  It  also  contains  the  fol- 
lowing very  striking  sentence: 

This  is  one  of  thoso  nnomaloiis  propnsitions  wliirh,  srcm- 
In^Iy  uppcnlinp  to  thought  nitopcthcr  npnrt  from  the  mnlhc- 
matical,  is  yet  one  which  only  the  mathematician  can  fully 
understand. 


106    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

This  sentence  may  well  be  applied  to  the  working 
of  Poe's  mind  in  all  of  his  most  famous  stories.  His 
mathematical  exactitude  was  confirmed  in  regard  to 
the  Mary  Rogers  case  when,  long  afterward,  the 
confession  of  two  persons  proved  that  Poe's  deduc- 
tions had  been  absolutely  correct. 

The  same  intense  mathematical  rcasonins  was 
brought  to  bear  when  Dickens  began  to  put  forth  in 
serial  form  the  novel,  Barnahy  Rudge.  Before  many 
numbers  had  appeared,  Poe  published  an  exposition 
of  the  entire  plot  of  the  story,  and  he  did  it  so  accu- 
rately that  Dickens  was  aghast.  "Are  you  the  de- 
vil? "  he  asked  of  Poe.  Here  again  was  a  mental 
feat,  not  obviously  mathematical,  yet  one  which  only 
a  mathematician's  mind  could  successfully  accom- 
plish. 

Poe's  great  popularity  in  France  is  largely  due  to 
the  scientific  lucidity  of  his  thought;  for  the  French 
are  a  mathematical  people,  ruthlessly  logical,  and 
with  a  love  for  what  is  definite  and  precise.  Their 
instinct  for  the  dramatic  accounts  for  the  tolera- 
tion of  his  stilted  rhetoric,  which  at  times  offends 
the  taste  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  reader.  Perhaps  the 
fact  that  Poe  rants  in  some  of  his  stories  is  due  to 
hereditary  influences,  for  both  his  father  and  his 
mother  were  actors.  Take,  for  example,  these  sen- 
tences from  his  greatly  overpraised  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher: 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  107 

And  now — to-night — Ethclred — ha !  ha ! — the  breaking  of  the 
hermit's  door,  and  the  death-crj-  of  the  dragon,  and  the 
clangour  of  the  shield !  Say,  rather,  the  rending  of  her  coffin, 
and  the  grating  of  the  iron  hinges  of  her  prison,  and  her 
struggles  within  the  coppered  archwaj  of  the  vault!  Oh, 
whither  shall  I  fly?     Will  she  not  be  here  anon? 


This  is  surely  Ercles'  vein.  It  will  not  do  to  say 
in  Poe's  defence  that  this  sort  of  overwrought  decla- 
mation  was  characteristic  of  the  style  in  which  men 
wrote  at  the  time  when  Poe  composed  the  story.  He 
himself  by  no  means  lapses  very  often  into  verbal 
hysteria.  In  the  best  of  his  tales  he  writes  with  the 
same  naturalness  that  we  expect  to-day  of  even  sec- 
ond-rate authors.  The  real  defect  of  Poe  is  not  to  be 
discovered  in  his  occasional  bombast.  It  is  a  defect 
tliat  is  far  less  superficial  and  far  more  profound ;  and 
it  deserves  not  only  mention,  but  concrete  illustration. 

The  mathematical  quality  of  Poe's  mind  gave  sin- 
gular effectiveness  to  his  fiction.  His  imagination 
was  a  constructive  one.  It  worked  in  harmony  with 
his  reasoning  faculties,  and  he  proceeded  bit  by  bit 
to  build  up  an  ahnost  flawless  literary  structure.  Dr. 
Charles  Scars  Baldwin  has  very  well  said  of  Poe: 

When  he  talked  of  literary  art,  he  talked  habitually  in 
terms  of  construction.  When  he  worked,  nt  least  he  planned 
an  ingeniously  suspended  solution  of  incidents;  for  he  was 
always  pleased  with  mere  solution. 

It  is  true  that  because  of  his  invention,  his  con- 


108    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

structiveness,  and  his  correlation  of  details,  Poc  is 
one  of  the  great  masters  of  the  short  story.  But  I 
should  be  unwilling  to  say  with  Dr.  Baldwin  that 
"  from  his  brain  was  bom  the  short  story  as  a  com- 
plete, finished,  and  self-sufficing  whole."  This  seems 
to  imply  that  Poe  originated  the  short  story  in  its 
perfection.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  a  pro- 
fessor of  English  literature  or,  for  that  matter,  of 
any  literature  whatever,  could  make  so  extraordinary 
an  assertion.  What  does  Dr.  Baldwin  think,  for 
example,  of  Balzac's  short  stories,  such  as  El  Ver- 
dugo.  La  Grande  Breteche,  and  Le  Colonel  Chahat 
■ — not  to  mention  others.?  Every  one  of  these  is 
superior  to  Poe's,  while  still  representing  "  the  gro- 
tesque and  the  arabesque."  Or,  if  Dr.  Baldwin 
pleads  that  Balzac  was  a  contemporary  of  Poc,  what 
could  be  more  nearly  perfect  than  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
horror-story  called  The  Tapestried  Chamber — won- 
derful in  its  simplicity,  yet  so  powerful  in  its  effect 
that,  after  reading  it,  men  of  the  strongest  nerves 
are  unwilling  to  go  to  bed  immediately  or  to  be  left 
alone  in  the  dark?  But  retrace  our  steps  still  further 
to  the  Decameron  of  Boccaccio,  or  still  further  to  the 
Milesian  Tales  which  are  interwoven  by  Apuleius  in 
his  Metamorphoses.  The  story  of  the  commercial 
traveller  in  the  first  book,  and  that  of  the  robber  in 
the  fourth  book,  are  "  complete,  finished,  and  self- 
sufficing."  And  how  about  the  tales  in  Herodotus, 
that  superb  story-teller.?     The  narrative  of  Rhamp- 


r 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  109 

sinitus  and  the  Robber  has  invention,  directness,  and 
suspense  as  its  chief  quahties.  And  we  may  con- 
tinue our  researches  and  look  at  some  of  the  short 
stories  in  the  Bible,  of  Avhich,  for  example,  the  story 
of  Joseph  and  his  brethren,  of  Samson,  of  Esther, 
and  of  Job,  have  always  been  fascinating  to  men  and 
women  and  children,  and  they  show  that  the  true 
genesis  of  the  short  story  antedates  Christianity  as 
it  probably  antedates  any  written  records  which  the 
world  possesses.  It  would  surely  have  been  odd  if 
men  had  been  obliged  to  wait  until  the  year  1830 
for  a  short  story  that  was  "  complete,  finished,  and 
self-suflScing  " !  Yet  my  principal  reason  for  dis- 
senting from  Dr.  Baldwin's  dictum  is  found  in  the 
very  limitations  which  were  imposed  upon  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  by  the  mathematical  bias  of  his  mind. 

A  truly  mathematical  mind  dwells,  as  it  were,  in  a 
sort  of  vacuum.  It  conceives  order,  harmony,  pro- 
portion, form — that  is  to  say,  every  sort  of  abstrac- 
tion. It  does  not  often,  however,  possess  sympathy 
and  an  understanding  of  the  emotions  in  their  wider 
range.  This  truth  is  admirably  and  rather  pathetic- 
ally exomplifitd  In  Poe.  He  can  construct  a  plot  and 
compress  it  within  small  compass.  He  can  work  out 
its  solution  with  marvellous  ingenuity.  He  can  excite 
wonder,  curiosity,  and  terror.  But  the  one  thing  that 
Ik;  can  not  do  is  to  create  character. 

In  this  respect,  his  short  stories  are  just  as  de- 
fective as   tlic  short  stories  which  the  Greeks  com- 


110    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

posed  three  centuries  before  Christ.  His  personages 
are  dummies.  What  they  do  is  extremely  interesting ; 
what  they  are  and  what  they  feel,  no  one  knows  or 
cares.  Thus,  M.  Dupin  is  a  thinking-machine,  an 
embodiment  of  reason,  impassive,  impersonal ;  but  he 
does  not  live  for  us  as  a  man,  since  he  is  not  a  man. 

Compare  him,  for  example,  with  Sherlock  Holmes 
as  drawn  by  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle.  Conan  Doyle 
has  not  so  original  a  genius  as  Poc  had ;  yet,  none  the 
less,  he  has  some  qualities  which  make  his  best  work 
more  pleasing  and  far  closer  to  the  universal  under- 
standing. The  proof  of  this  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  the  name  of  Sherlock  Holmes  is  known  all  over 
the  civilised  world;  while  if  you  mention  M.  Dupin 
to  the  man  of  average  intelligence,  it  is  long  odds 
that  he  will  not  remember  and  recognise  it. 

Let  me  illustrate  this  sharp  distinction  by  examin- 
ing a  famous  short  story  of  Poe's,  and  by  comparing 
it  with  a  short  story  of  Conan  Doyle's  which  was 
clearly  suggested  by  the  other. 

The  Cask  of  Amontillado  is  one  of  the  shortest  and 
also  one  of  the  best  known  of  Poe's  fictions.  It  is  sup- 
posed to  be  narrated  by  an  Italian  who  has  suffered 
insults  at  the  hand  of  a  professed  friend,  Fortu- 
nato.  He  plans  revenge ;  and  at  the  time  of  the  car- 
nival he  asks  Fortunato's  advice  about  the  merits  of 
some  Amontillado  wine.  Fortunate  is  a  connois- 
seur of  wine,  and  willingly  consents  to  go  down  into 
the  vaults  where  the  great  cask  is  supposed  to  be. 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  111 

His  enemy  really  conducts  him  into  the  catacombs, 
through  heaps  of  bones — a  slimy,  gloomy,  terrifying 
place,  beneath  the  river's  bed,  and  reeking  with  the 
moisture  which  has  oozed  down  through  the  walls. 
Fortunato  enters  a  sort  of  niche,  only  to  find  that 
his  progress  is  arrested  b}'  solid  rock.  In  an  instant 
his  enemy  has  shackled  him  to  the  wall,  and  almost 
at  once  begins,  with  stone  and  mortar,  to  close  up 
the  entrance  to  the  niche  and  to  make  of  it  a  tomb 
where  Fortunato  must  perish  in  the  dark.  The  story 
is  told  most  vividly ;  and  at  the  end  one  hears  the 
shrieks  of  the  victim  and  the  tinkle  of  the  bells  that 
he  wore  upon  his  carnival  attire.  The  sound  ceases ; 
the  vault  is  closed ;  and  vengeance  is  achieved. 

Now,  this  narrative  is  made  to  thrill  us  with  a 
sort  of  nameless  horror ;  yet  the  defect  in  its  art  lies 
in  the  fact  that  our  sympathies  go  out  entirely  to 
Fortunato,  and  we  regard  the  man  who  seeks  revenge 
in  this  dreadful  way  as  far  worse  than  an  ordinary 
murderer.  Poe  has  not  made  us  feel  the  justice  of 
the  act.  He  merely  speaks  quite  casually  of  "  the 
thousand  injuries  of  Fortunato  "  wltliout  giving  any 
clue  to  what  tlicy  were.  Hence  the  effect  of  tlie  story 
is  impaired  by  our  natural  human  sympathies,  of 
which  the  author  lias  taken  no  account. 

Compare  now  Con  an  Uoyle's  story  called  The  New 
Cntacomh,  the  j)lot  of  wliich  Is  directly  l)orrowcd  from 
this  theme  of  Poe's.  It  Is  told  by  one  Julius  Bcrger, 
a  German   student   In   Home,  who   lias  <lc(ply   loved 


112    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

an  English  girl  and  has  hoped  to  marry  her.  A  dis- 
solute Englishman,  however,  has  wronged  her,  and 
has  cynically  told  his  friends  of  what  he  deems  a 
gay  adventure.  The  girl's  honour  is  lost,  and  she 
disappears  in  order  to  hide  her  shame.  The  Eng- 
lishman does  not  know  that  she  had  first  loved  Julius ; 
and  in  talking  with  him,  he  makes  a  jest  of  the  whole 
aiFair. 

Here  the  art  of  Conan  Doyle  is  higher  than  the 
art  of  Poe.  He  has  appealed  to  our  humanity,  and 
has  aroused  in  us  a  lively  indignation,  so  that  we 
are  prepared  for  the  terrible  revenge  which  Julius 
takes.  The  German  student  has  discovered  a  cata- 
comb of  which  no  one  else  has  learned  the  secret ;  and 
he  invites  the  Englishman  to  accompany  him  through 
its  mazes  to  the  central  chamber.  When  there,  Julius, 
who  knows  every  turn  of  the  catacomb,  suddenly  ex- 
tinguishes the  light,  retreats  backward  into  the  ap- 
palling darkness,  and  in  a  voice  which  echoes 
strangely  through  the  hollow  vaults,  tells  the  reason 
why  he  has  done  this  deed.  The  story  ends  with  an 
impressive  awfulncss  which  is  not  inferior  to  that 
attained  by  Poe,  and  which  affects  us  far  more,  be- 
cause we  feel  that  justice  has  been  done,  and  that 
innocence  has  been  avenged. 

Herein,  briefly,  lies  the  diff"erence  between  the  short 
story,  as  Poe  wrote  it,  and  the  further  development  of 
the  short  story  which  is  not  inferior  in  invention  and 
constructiveness,  while  it  is  otherwise  superior,  be- 


POE    AS    A    STORY-WRITER  113 

cause  in  it  the  cold-blooded  impersonality  of  the 
mathematician  has  been  replaced  by  a  warmth  of  feel- 
ing which  belongs  to  men  and  women  who  have  hearts 
as  well  as  heads,  and  in  whom  the  whole  gamut  of 
emotion  can  be  stirred  by  the  hand  of  a  master  who 
knows  how  to  make  an  instantaneous  appeal. 


HAWTHORNE    AND     "  THE 
SCARLET   LETTER" 


Ill 


HAWTHORNE  AND  "THE  SCARLET 
LETTER  " 

If  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  had  never  written  TJie 
Scarlet  Letter,  it  is  almost  certain  that  to-day  he 
would  be  remembered  only  as  one  of  America's  minor 
writers.  The  Scarlet  Letter  has  won  readers  for  his 
other  books  and  has  raised  him  to  the  position  of  a 
classic.  When  he  began  its  composition,  he  was  in  the 
forty-fifth  year  of  his  life.  He  had  struggled  hard 
to  win  success  in  literature  and  had  lamentably  failed. 
His  inventiveness  had  given  him  material  for  scores  of 
tales  and  sketches.  He  had  edited  the  manuscripts 
of  other  men.  He  had  contributed  to  many  publica- 
tions. Yet  only  a  very  few  paid  much  attention  to 
him  as  a  writer,  and  those  few  were  largely  influenced 
by  their  personal  regard  for  him.  His  pen  could  not 
provide  for  him  even  a  meagre  livelihood,  and  he  felt 
the  pinch  of  actual  poverty.  There  was  a  time  when, 
with  his  devoted  wife,  he  lived  at  Concord  on  the 
products  of  his  kitchen-garden.  He  chopped  wood, 
and  cooked  the  scanty  meals,  and  even  washed  the 
dishes  in  the  back-parlour  of  the  Old  Manso.  He  re- 
corded the  menu  of  his  Christmas  dinner  in  1843  as 
"  quince,  apples,  bread-and-checsc,  and  milk." 

But  soon  even  bread-and-chccse  and  milk  became 

117 


118    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

almost  too  much  to  hope  for.  The  wolf  was  not  only 
at  the  door,  but  was  forever  thrusting  its  gaunt  head 
within.  And  to  all  this  anxiety  for  the  morrow,  there 
was  added  the  bitter  thought  that  he  had  failed.  "  I 
am  the  obscurest  man  of  letters  in  America !  "  said  he 
on  one  occasion ;  and  he  was,  indeed,  obscure.  Then, 
at  the  moment  of  his  dire  need,  there  came,  through 
his  old  college  friend,  Franklin  Pierce,  an  appoint- 
ment to  be  surveyor  of  customs  for  the  port  of  Salem. 
It  meant  bread  and  butter  to  the  discouraged  writer ; 
and  he  turned  his  back  on  literature,  to  sit  in  a  dingy 
office  on  a  rickety  wharf,  where  his  physical  outlook, 
as  he  has  described  it,  was  limited  to  "  glimpses  of  the 
shops  of  grocers,  block-makers,  slop-sellers  and  ship- 
chandlers."  The  name  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne 
ceased  for  a  time  to  appear  in  books,  but  was  instead 
"  imprinted,  with  a  stencil  and  black  paint,  on  pep- 
per-bags and  baskets  of  anatto,  and  cigar-boxes  and 
bales  of  all  kinds  of  dutiable  merchandise." 

It  seems,  as  we  look  back  upon  it,  almost  a  desecra- 
tion that  one  with  so  fine  an  intellect  and  so  remark- 
able a  personality  should  have  been  compelled  to 
drudge  amid  surroundings  so  uncongenial.  Still,  it 
is  almost  certain  that  this  was  in  reality  a  period 
of  recuperation,  of  germination.  Hawthorne  needed 
exactly  such  a  physical  and  mental  change.  His 
literary  faculty  was  a  peculiar  one.  When  he  did 
more  than  a  slight  amount  of  creative  work,  he  al- 
ways experienced  a  sort  of  intellectual  exhaustion. 


"THE    SCARLET    LETTER"  119 

His  fancy  must  lie  fallow  for  a  time.  He  exhibits, 
when  one  studies  him,  a  certain  low  vitality  which  he 
shared  with  some  of  his  contemporaries,  though  in  a 
degree  far  greater.  This  low  vitality,  which  one  may 
call  an  intellectual  anaemia,  is  felt  sometimes  in  Emer- 
son. It  was  very  marked  in  Bronson  Alcott  and  in 
William  Ellery  Channing.  Even  In  Longfellow  it 
has  been  made  the  basis  of  a  criticism  that  he  is 
defective  in  virility  and  force, — that  he  is  at  once 
too  gentle  and  too  fond  of  what  is  commonplace. 
Indeed,  in  most  of  the  New  England  penmen  one 
finds  a  thinness  and  lack  of  body,  affording  a  strong 
contrast  with  the  full-blooded,  hearty  strength  of 
Old  England's  writers.  Plain  living  may  induce 
high  thinking,  but  it  must  not  be  so  very  plain  as 
to  afford  imperfect  nourishment.  To  make  a  friv- 
olous comparison,  the  Yankee  writers  of  the  middle 
nineteenth  century  seem  to  have  been  fed  on  pie  and 
pickles,  when  a  more  normal  fare  of  good  roast  beef 
and  ale  would  have  given  them  much  stronger  bodies 
to  support  still  sounder  minds. 

Hawthorne,  at  any  rate,  could  never  safely  spur 
his  Pegasus.  His  multitudinous  short  stories  show 
this  plainly.  Almost  every  one  of  them  contains  the 
germ  of  an  original  and  often  quite  remarkable  idea. 
Here  are  imagination,  mystery,  a  fondness  for  the 
dark  things  of  human  life  and  of  the  supernatural. 
In  the  hands  of  Poc  or  of  HofTniann  these  con- 
ceptions would  have  been  worked  out  into  concrete 


120    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

masterpieces,  Hawthorne,  however,  lets  them,  as 
it  were,  slip  through  his  fingers.  His  hands  arc 
nerveless ;  and  in  the  actual  moment  of  execution,  he 
falters  and  drops  into  sheer  futility.  He  knows  so 
well  just  what  he  wants  to  do,  and  yet  he  can  not  do 
it !  The  result  is  shadow  and  not  substance,  a  mirage 
in  place  of  what  might  well  have  been  a  miracle.  And, 
therefore,  out  of  the  hundred  tales  which  are  the  work 
of  his  first  period,  only  a  dozen  or  so  are  read  to-day 
by  any  save  the  conscientious  student  of  American 
literature. 

The  cause  of  this  futility  was  the  author's  lack  of 
intellectual  robustness,  the  devitalised  condition  into 
which  he  often  fell.  Had  he  written  twenty  stories 
instead  of  five  times  twenty,  resting  between  whiles, 
every  one  of  them  would  have  been  upon  his  highest 
level  of  achievement.  As  it  is,  let  us  not  deplore  the 
fact  that  three  years  of  his  life  were  spent  among 
dull  custom-house  inspectors  and  bluff  sea-captains 
and  the  tarry-salty  smells  of  Salem's  wharf.  Those 
three  years  of  lull  were  a  lucky  chance  for  Hawthorne 
and  for  our  literature.  He  hated  them  at  the  time, 
though  he  found  some  comfort  in  the  thought  that 
both  Burns  and  Chaucer  had  been  in  the  customs- 
service  in  their  day.  But  he  also  hated  and  re- 
sented his  summary  removal  from  office  when  Presi- 
dent Taylor  succeeded  Polk.  Hawthorne  was  once 
more  cast  out  upon  the  world.  His  friends  sub- 
scribed a  sum  of  money  to  meet  his  immediate  neces- 


"THE    SCARLET    LETTER"  121 

sitles ;  and  Mr.  James  T.  Fields,  the  publisher — a 
bustling,  cheery  optimist — coming  down  to  Salem, 
found  that  Hawthorne  had  again  begun  to  write  with 
the  zest  which  years  of  abstemiousness  had  given  him. 
Fields  begged  to  see  what  he  had  written.  Haw- 
thorne, with  his  habitual  faintheartedness,  drew  back. 

"  Who  would  risk  publishing  a  book  for  me,  the 
least  popular  writer  in  America  ?  " 

"  I  would,"  responded  the  jovial  Fields.  "  I'll  be- 
gin with  an  edition  of  two  thousand  copies  of  any- 
thing you  choose  to  write." 

"  What  madness !  "  cried  Hawthorne.  "  Your 
friendship  for  me  gets  the  better  of  your  judgment." 

There  was  a  long  and  friendly  wrangle  between  the 
two.  At  last,  when  Fields  was  leaving  empty-handed, 
Hawthorne  shamefacedly  thrust  a  roll  of  manuscript 
upon  him. 

"  There,"  said  he ;  "  it  is  either  very  good  or  very 
bad — I  don't  know  which." 

The  manuscript  contained  the  first  draft  of  The 
Scarlet  Letter.  The  noYcl  in  its  final  form  was  pub- 
lished in  1850.  Two  editions  of  it  were  almost  im- 
mediately exhausted.  At  the  age  of  forty-six,  the 
**  obscurest  man  of  letters  in  America  "  took  rank 
among  the  few  who  have  achieved  a  lasting  fame. 

When  Hawthorne  wrote  The  Scarlet  Letter,  he  did, 
for  the  one  time  In  his  whole  life,  exactly  what  he 
meant  to  do.  He  has  himself  recorded  that  he  penned 
its  pages  at  a  white  heat,  thrilled  by   the  emotions 


122    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

tliat  were  excited  in  him, — "  as  if  I  were  tossed  up 
and  down  upon  an  ocean."  For  once,  his  grasp  was 
finn.  Physical  energy  sustained  the  effort  of  intel- 
lectual power.  And  so,  in  its  own  way,  the  story  is 
very  nearly  perfect — all  except  the  anticlimax  of  the 
last  few  pages. 

There  were  reasons  for  Hawthorne's  doubt,  ex- 
pressed to  Fields,  as  to  whether  the  book  was  very 
good  or  very  bad.  Had  Its  author  been  merely  a 
clever  writer  and  not  a  man  of  genius,  his  work  would 
have  sunk  to  the  level  of  melodrama.  As  Hawthorne 
actually  wrought  it  out,  it  is  dramatic  and  some- 
thing more.  It  may,  indeed,  be  styled  theatric,  and 
I  might  go  still  further  and  call  it  operatic.  No 
wonder  that  it  has  been  taken  by  a  living  composer 
for  musical  interpretation.  The  libretto  fairly  leaps 
out  of  its  pages.  The  scenes  are  already  indicated 
with  sharp  distinctness,  for  the  whole  tale  Is  episodic. 
The  grim  and  weather-beaten  prison  with  Its  oaken, 
Iron-clamped  door — the  pillory — a  balcony  project- 
ing from  beneath  the  church's  eaves — beyond,  the 
harbour  with  a  glimpse  of  high-decked  ships — a 
beautiful  but  guilty  woman  wearing  the  Scarlet  Let- 
ter on  her  breast  and  passing  from  the  prison  to  the 
pillory — here  is  a  strangely  vivid  setting  for  the 
lever  de  r'ldeau.  How  much  colour  and  picturesque- 
ness  in  the  chorus,  or  the  stage  mob,  if  you  please! 
Aged  women  and  young  girls,  stem  Puritan  Inhabi- 
tants   of   Old   Boston   with   bell-crowned   hats   and 


"THE    SCARLET    LETTER"  123 

gloomy  looks,  an  Indian  or  two  in  paint  and  feath- 
ers, and  a  group  of  swaggering  buccaneers,  garbed 
strangely, — it  is  of  the  essence  of  tlic  operatic  stage. 

Then  think  of  those  especial  episodes  which  stand 
out  most  vividly.  The  chorus  greets  Hester  Pr^-nne 
as  she  walks  proudly  to  the  pillory,  and  it  gives  the 
clue  to  what  has  gone  before.  Then  comes  the  trio 
between  Wilson,  the  old  clergyman,  Arthur  Dimmes- 
dale  and  Governor  BcIHngham ;  followed  by  the  im- 
passioned appeal  of  Dimmesdale  to  Hester,  urging 
her  to  tell  the  truth,  if  it  be  for  her  soul's  peace.  His 
appeal  is  broken  by  her  short  and  sharp  refusals, 
and  by  the  deep  voice  of  Roger  Chillingvrorth — ob- 
viously a  basso.  Think  also  of  the  operatic  possi- 
bihties  of  the  prison  scene,  where  Roger  plays  the 
physician  and  is  alone  with  Hester,  the  wife  who  dis- 
honoured him  by  reason  of  her  love  for  some  man 
whom  he  threatens  to  discover  and  of  whom  he  says: 
"Let  him  live!  Let  him  hide  himself  in  outward 
honour,  if  he  may.     None  the  less,  he  shall  be  mine !  " 

And  again,  the  crafty,  stealthy  arts  of  Chilling- 
worth,  suspecting  Dimmesdale,  and  playing  with  ma- 
lignant skill  upon  that  tortured  conscience,  until  at 
last,  the  misshapen  seeker  after  vengeance  learns  the 
secret  of  the  minister,  and  finds  upon  his  breast  the 
great  scarlet  A.  And  the  forest  scene,  where  Hester 
meets  her  former  lover,  while  the  uncanny  little  Pearl 
sprtrts  near  them,  is  full  of  dramatic  and  operatic 
po5sIbilities.    The  powerful  climax  is  worked  up  with 


I'Ji    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

all  tlic  mastery  of  stage  effect  that  the  most  skilful 
playwright  could  imagine.  Here  the  chorus  is  di- 
versified by  the  introduction  of  soldiers  in  burnished 
steel  who  enter  to  the  strains  of  military  music.  The 
procession  of  the  Governor  and  magistrates  varies 
the  spectacle,  while  the  tense  excitement  of  the  mo- 
ment is  raised  to  a  still  higher  pitch  by  the  seaman's 
message  which  shows  that  the  devilish  Roger  has  pre- 
vented the  escape  of  Dimmesdale  and  Hester.  And 
at  last,  Dimmesdale,  in  the  hour  of  his  seeming  tri- 
umph, which  is  also  the  hour  of  his  death,  mounting 
the  scaffold  where  once  Hester  stood,  reveals  his 
guilt,  and  with  convulsive  hand  tears  open  his  black 
vestment  and  displays  the  scarlet  symbol  of  his  shame 
and  hers. 

The  genius  of  Hawthorne  is  clearly  shown  in  the 
art  with  which  he  has  done  so  much  with  such  slight 
material.  There  are  only  three  characters  in  the 
story.  There  is,  first  of  all,  Hester  Prynne,  noble 
and  strong  and  pure  of  heart,  in  spite  of  the  trans- 
gression which  has  marred  her  life.  If  she  has  sinned, 
it  is  because  of  the  great  law  of  Nature  which  gives 
to  every  woman  the  desire  for  love.  There  is  Arthur 
Dimmesdale,  gifted,  sensitive,  and  with  the  instincts 
of  a  saint ;  yet  still  a  sinner,  guilty  of  a  double  sin 
because  of  his  holy  calling,  and  swayed  by  moral 
cowardice  which  ties  his  tongue  until  the  end  and 
lets  him  live  a  hypocrite.  And  finally,  there  is  Roger 
Chillingworth,  cold-hearted,  implacable,  and  show'ng 


"THE    SCARLET    LETTER"  125 

that  malignant  spirit  which  so  often  goes  with  ph^'si- 
cal  deformity.  These  three — the  confessed  and 
branded  sinner,  the  undetected  sinner,  and  the  man 
who  is  a  self-appointed  instrument  to  scourge  the 
other  two — these  are  the  onlj^  figures  on  which  the 
author  has  concentrated  the  glaring  light  of  his 
imagination.  Yet  out  of  what  would  seem  to  be  the 
meagerest  of  material,  he  has  created  something  for 
which  there  is  no  parallel  in  English  literature.  Plow 
skilfully  he  manages  the  physical  aspects  of  his  story ! 
In  it  he  was  almost  the  first  to  cast  the  glamour  of 
pure  romance  about  the  harshness  and  severity  of 
New  England.  Old  Boston,  as  he  limns  it,  is  as 
quaint  and  full  of  fascinating  possibilities  as  any 
Rhenish  town  with  a  whole  millennium  of  legend. 
The  trackless  woods  which  circle  it,  seem,  under  Haw- 
thorne's magic  touch,  to  teem  with  mystery  as  though 
he  had  transported  the  Schwarzwald  to  the  Western 
world.  The  beauty  of  its  silent  glades,  where  the 
sunlight  sifts  through  the  greenery,  makes  it  en- 
chanted ground;  while  the  lurking  Indians  who  now 
and  then  appear  so  silently,  take  not  so  strong  a 
hold  upon  the  fancy  as  do  the  dark  hints  concerning 
what  takes  place  at  night  when  in  the  gloom,  grim 
hags  steal  out  to  meet  the  IJhick  ^L'ln  who  has  bought 
their  souls.  There  is  a  smell  of  wltclicroft  in  the  air, 
as  Hawthorne  tells  the  story ;  and  his  reticence  and 
half-spoken  intimations  are  proofs  of  his  consum- 
mate art. 


V26    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Ha^^'thorne  was  a  symbolist,  one  wlio  spoke  in  alle- 
gory, and  let  the  concrete  always  serve  as  a  clue  to 
the  intangible  yet  more  intense  reality  of  what  lay 
behind  it.  Thus,  the  scaffold  on  which  Hester  stood 
to  be  stared  at  by  a  thousand  eyes,  is  a  symbol  of 
her  public  shame.  The  prison  is  another  symbol. 
The  forest,  where  she  yielded  to  her  lover,  reminds 
us  always  of  the  guilt  that  has  been  hers  as  well  as 
Dimmesdale's.  But  it  is  the  scarlet  letter  which  is 
the  one  pervasive  and  almost  terrifying  symbol,  giv- 
ing in  itself  the  motif  of  the  whole.  As  Mr.  Wood- 
berry  has  well  expressed  the  thought :  "  It  multiplies 
itself,  as  the  tale  unfolds,  with  greater  intensity  and 
mysterious  significance  and  dread  suggestion,  as  if  in 
mirrors  set  round  about  it;  .  .  .  and  as  if  this 
were  not  enough,  the  scarlet  letter,  at  a  climax  of  the 
dark  story,  lightens  forth  over  the  whole  heavens  as 
a  s^'^mbol  of  what  can  not  be  hid  even  in  the  intensest 
blackness  of  night."  This  recurrence  of  a  physical 
object  to  keep  the  meaning  of  the  book  before  the 
reader's  mind  forever,  is  an  instinctive  bit  of  art  in 
Hawthorne.  It  was  employed  with  conscious  purpose 
by  Emile  Zola  three  decades  later,  in  the  great  bra- 
zen still  of  VAssommoir,  in  the  reeking  mine-pit  of 
Germinal  and  in  the  Napoleonic  bees  of  La  Debacle. 

But  it  is  not  the  outward  aspects  of  The  Scarlet 
Letter  that  excite  the  deepest  and  most  lasting  in- 
terest. This  is  to  be  found  in  its  subtler  phases,  in 
its  moral  lesson,  if  there  be  one,  and  in  its  revelation 


"THE    SCARLET    LETTER"  127 

of  the  inner  mind  of  liim  who  wrote  It.  And  to  under- 
stand these  things,  we  must  ever  so  briefly  scan  the 
lesson  of  heredity  which  helps  explain  so  much. 
Hawthorne's  first  ancestor  on  American  soil  exhib- 
ited a  strange  melange  of  tastes  and  tasks.  He  was 
a  warrior,  a  preacher  of  great  eloquence,  a  reader  of 
fine  English  prose,  and  a  stern  magistrate  who  or- 
dered the  public  whipping  of  women  because  they  were 
proven  to  be  Quakers.  His  son  condemned  to  death 
women  who  were  reputed  witches ;  and  he  showed 
such  savagery  and  blood-lust  in  the  court-room,  that 
one  whose  wife  was  sentenced  by  him,  cursed  him 
and  the  children  of  his  children's  children,  in  a  curse 
that  was  Oriental  in  its  fury  and  completeness,  and 
that  was  not  forgotten  after  many  generations. 

Hawthorne's  father  was  a  sailor,  the  captain  of  a 
Salem  vessel,  and  he  bore  the  reputation  of  being 
black  and  stem  to  those  whom  he  commanded.  When 
he  died,  in  far-off  Surinam,  his  wife  was  only  twenty- 
seven  years  of  age.  Yet  she,  too,  had  the  intensity 
and  deep  passion  of  the  family  which  she  had  entered. 
She  called  young  ILawthornc,  witli  his  sisters,  to  her 
room,  and  told  them  dryly  that  their  father  was  now 
dead.  Then  she  sent  her  children  to  her  own  father's 
house  and  for  forty  years  lived  in  a  solitude  that  was 
rarely  broken.  Long  after  Hawthorne  had  grown 
to  manhood,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  of  having  eaten  din- 
ner with  his  mother — "  for  the  first  time  in  my  life 
that  I  can  remember." 


128    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Recalling,  tlicn,  his  ancestral  traits,  we  can  in  part 
explain  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  as  a  man,  and  more 
especially  the  Hawthorne  of  The  Scarlet  Letter.  All 
the  sunshine  of  his  nature  was  lavished  on  his  wife 
and  children,  with  whom  his  every  hour  was  an  hour 
of  unclouded  happiness.  But  to  the  world  at  large 
he  was  the  true  descendant  of  the  men  who  scourged 
the  Quaker  women  and  doomed  the  witches  and  terri- 
fied the  sailors,  as  he  was  also  the  son  of  her  who  let 
her  whole  life  wither  for  what  she  felt  to  be  a  "  princi- 
ple." Hawthorne  had  friends  who  loved  him  well, 
yet  he  never  spared  them  in  his  criticism.  He  was 
burdened  with  a  secret  pessimism  which  was  ever 
a  dark  blot  on  his  secret  soul.  He  wearied  both  of 
men  and  places  in  a  little  time.  When  he  left  his 
native  Salem,  he  described  it  as  "  an  earthly  cavern." 
When  he  left  Brook  Farm,  he  wrote :  "  Even  my 
custom-house  experience  was  not  such  a  thraldom 
and  weariness."  When  at  last,  by  the  kindness  of 
President  Pierce,  he  left  America  for  the  lucrative 
consulship  at  Liverpool,  he  was  glad,  so  his  biogra- 
pher informs  us,  "  to  get  away  from  his  native  land, 
upon  which  ...  he  looked  back  with  the  feel- 
ing that  he  never  desired  to  return  to  it."  Yet  in 
England  he  was  wholly  discontented  and  displeased. 
He  refused  to  meet  many  of  the  famous  men  who 
would  have  been  glad  to  offer  him  their  hospitality. 
One  instance  of  almost  incredible  tactlessness  has 
been  preserved  in  a  brief,  surly  note  which  he  penned 


"THE    SCARLET    LETTER"  129 

from  Liverpool  to  a  Mr.  Bright,  who  had  striven  to 
make  this  difficult  genius  happy.  "  Dear  Mr. 
Bright,"  wrote  Hawthorne,  "  I  have  come  back  (only 
for  a  day  or  two)  to  this  black,  miserable  hole."  His 
contempt  for  England  he  has  recorded  in  the  pages 
of  Our  Old  Home.  The  English  he  described  as 
"  beefish,  muttonish,  portish,  and  porterish."  Yet 
he  was  unwilling  to  meet  such  Englishmen  as  Tenny- 
son and  Thackeray  and  Macaulay,  who  were  not 
beefish  and  muttonish.  He  did  not  care  for  men  of 
letters.  It  is  hard  to  say  for  what,  precisely,  he  did 
care.  At  heart,  he  was  a  pessimist,  a  man  of  gloom, 
a  fatalist,  a  Yankee  Heraclitus.  And  with  it  all  there 
was  a  moral  sternness,  a  relentlessness  which  his  biog- 
raphers have  called  Puritanism.  Yet  in  Hawthorne 
it  was  not  really  Puritanism,  since  the  deep  religious 
conviction  which  was  the  moving  force,  the  main- 
spring, of  Puritanism,  was  in  his  case  lacking.  For 
Puritanism,  while  ascetic  and  severe  in  doctrine,  was 
not  always  unsparing,  pitiless,  relentless.  There 
were  the  "  uncovenantcd  mercies  of  the  Lord,"  and 
even  Jonathan  Edwards  did  not  forever  preach  of 
dire  damnation  and  the  glaring  flames  of  hell.  There 
was  a  place  even  in  his  stern  creed,  for  charity  and 
hope.  Therefore,  it  seems  to  me  that  Hawthorne's 
ultimate  belief  was  rather  Paganism — not  the  joyous, 
gladsome,  irrcsponsil)lc  Paganism  of  the  Greeks,  but 
]*aganism  of  a  darker  hue, — the  Paganism  of  the 
Orientals. 


130    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

In  this  sense,  The  Scarlet  Letter  is  the  fullest  rev- 
elation of  his  innermost  convictions.  Hence,  in  its 
last  analysis,  it  is  a  deeply  hopeless  book,  tinged  with 
morbid  thoughts.  It  means  that  sin  can  not  be  for- 
given in  this  life;  that  its  taint,  of  which  the  scarlet 
letter  is  a  symbol,  must  remain  forever.  That  which 
is  done  can  never  be  undone.  Though  years  of  ex- 
piation pass,  though  the  sinner  repent  in  tears,  and 
sweat  great  drops  of  blood,  and  eat  the  bread  of  bit- 
terness, his  sin  is  unforgivcn.  If  he  confess  it,  he  is 
exposed  to  public  shame.  If  he  conceal  it,  he  is  riven 
by  remorse.  Love  and  affection  may  minister  to 
him,  as  wild-flowers  and  green  ivies  grow  about  a 
fire-scarred  trunk  in  the  forest — yet  the  marks  of 
scorching  flame  are  there,  and  the  charred  stump  can 
never  be  again  a  stately  tree.  In  all  this  there  is  no 
Christ,  no  hint  of  gentleness  and  grace  and  pity. 
The  Scarlet  Letter  brings  to  mind  a  very  diff*erent 
work  of  genius  written  by  a  very  diff^crcnt  type  of 
man,  yet  one  of  which  the  moral  is  the  same, — Ros- 
setti's  Jenny.  There  the  man  of  much  experience 
muses  over  the  street-waif  as  she  sleeps,  and  he  thinks 
of  all  the  problems  of  existence.  He,  too,  like  Haw- 
thorne, feels  the  mystery  of  life  and  death,  of  sin 
and  sorrow,  and  he  turns  away  perplexed ;  for  though 
it  is  a  mystery  that  stares  men  always  in  the  face, 
not  one  has  ever  fathomed  it. 


EMERSON 


VIII 

EMERSON 

Some  of  these  days  there  will  have  to  be  a  general 
readjustment  of  values  in  the  accepted  criticism  of 
American  literature.  For  a  long,  long  while  our 
people  were  necessarily  so  given  over  to  material 
things  as  to  have  little  time  for  cultivating  any  of 
the  arts.  In  this  respect,  Americans  were  like  the 
Romans  of  the  early  period.  Thc}'^  were  engaged 
in  a  struggle  for  existence.  Their  thoughts  were 
turned  toward  what  was  useful  rather  than  toward 
what  was  beautiful.  Hence,  in  this  country,  as  in 
early  Rome,  the  artistic  instinct  was  approved  only 
when  it  seemed  to  have  in  it  an  clement  of  the  prac- 
tical. Thus,  while  painting  was  not  entirely  dis- 
couraged, it  was  only  the  portrait-painter  who  could 
make  a  living  in  the  young  commonwealth.  He 
could  transmit  to  posterity  the  features  of  his  con- 
spicuous contemporaries ;  and  so  they  let  him  paint 
them,  being  moved  by  that  pride  which  was  shared 
alike  by  Puritan  and  by  Cavalier.  Again,  in  litera- 
ture it  was  only  tlio  historian  and  the  orator  who 
were  viewed  with  approbation.  The  historian  could 
record  the  exploits  of  soldiers  and  of  nation-builders. 
The  orator,  whether  political  or  theological,  could 
influence  his  hearers  to  action.  Therefore,  histories 
and  speeches  and  sermons  were  ronnnittcd  to  writing, 

i:}3 


13i.    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

and  were  printed  and  even  read;  but  poets  and  dra- 
matists and  essayists  were  for  a  long  time  scarcely 
known.  When,  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  they 
finally  appeared,  they  wrote  for  a  public  which  had 
long  since  lost  all  the  finer  standards  of  apprecia- 
tion. It  was  thought  to  be  remarkable  that  any  one 
could  write  a  book  at  all.  Even  a  newspaper  poet 
was  worth  consideration,  and  had  at  least  a  local 
fame;  while  professional  authors,  though  they  made 
but  little  money,  and  wrote,  as  Prescott  once  did, 
for  a  dollar  a  page,  were  viewed  with  indiscrim- 
inating  admiration. 

This  is  why,  if  you  open  one  of  the  early  Ameri- 
can anthologies,  such  as  Griswold's,  or  if  you  turn 
over  the  pages  of  the  "  literary  keepsakes "  and 
"  gift-books  "  of  that  generation,  you  will  find  the 
productions  of  a  few  men  of  talent  indiscriminately 
mixed  with  the  crudest  scrawls  of  mediocrity.  The 
reading  public  could  not  feel  the  difference,  for  ex- 
ample, between  the  early  writings  of  Longfellow  and 
those  of  Maria  Brooks ;  between  the  strange  harmo- 
nies of  Poe  and  the  slipshod  verse  of  Amelia  Welby ; 
or  between  the  graceful,  accurate  scholarship  of 
Prescott  and  the  ponderous  pedantry  of  Bancroft. 
Poe  himself  pilloried  Longfellow  as  a  mere  plagiar- 
ist, while  praising  very  highly  women  scribblers 
whose  verse  was  mawkish  to  the  last  degree. 

It  came  about,  therefore,  that  American  literature, 
as  our  first  critics  understood  it,  was  really  a  most 


EMERSON  135 

bizarre  assemblage  of  unequal  work — a  sort  of  crazy- 
quilt  in  which  silk  and  velvet  were  cobblc-stitchcd  to 
calico.  Only  by  very  slow  degrees  did  there  begin 
a  process  of  sifting,  and  even  now  this  process  has 
not  been  fully  carried  out.  Take  any  recent  history 
of  American  literature — like  that,  for  example,  of 
Professor  Trent — and  you  will  find  serious  attention 
given  not  merely  to  Irving  and  Cooper  and  Haw- 
thorne and  Lowell,  but  likewise  to  such  feeble  folk  as 
Thomas  Prince  and  John  Woolman  and  Joseph  Den- 
nis and  John  P.  Kennedy  and  Enos  Hitchcock. 

So,  as  I  said  before,  the  time  is  coming  when  all 
this  literary  underbrush  must  be  rooted  out  remorse- 
lessly. Then  we  shall  have  remaining  a  number  of 
writers  to  whom  new  values  will  be  assigned.  At  the 
present  time  the  practice  is  to  rank  them  as  being 
almost  equally  important.  Soon,  however,  it  will  be 
no  longer  necessary  to  hold  that  Cooper  was  a  very 
great  romancer,  that  Hawthorne  was  in  every  book 
of  his  a  genius  of  extraordinary  accomplishments, 
that  Bayard  Taylor  was  very  much  of  a  poet,  or  that 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  possessed  more  than  clever- 
ness and  facility.  We  shall  have  to  balance  these 
earlier  writers  with  those  of  our  own  time,  and  to 
judge  them,  not  by  parochial  standards,  but  by  the 
criterion  of  world-literature. 

When  this  is  done,  we  may  be  sure  that  two  men, 
at  least,  will  meet  any  test  that  shall  be  H})])lIod  to 
them.      Longfellow   and    Emerson    have    nothing   to 


136    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

fear.  Their  place  is  fixed ;  or,  if  it  be  changed  at  all, 
they  will  be  advanced  to  still  greater  heights. 

I  need  not  speak  of  Longfellow,  because  I  have 
already  done  so  in  this  volume.  His  fame  has  grown 
each  year.  He  is  no  longer  a  poet  of  America  alone, 
but  of  the  whole  English-speaking  world.  Yet  he 
must  yield  to  Emerson,  and  for  a  reason  that  is  very 
plain.  In  Longfellow,  one  admires  most  of  all  the 
beauty  and  fitness  of  the  form  in  which  he  has  em- 
bodied what  he  thought  and  felt.  Apart  from  the 
form,  his  thought  and  feeling  are  not  remarkable. 
Translate  him  into  any  other  language,  and  his 
poetry  would  not  rise  very  much  above  the  level  of 
the  commonplace.  It  is  the  exquisite  gift  of  ex- 
pression which  makes  his  lines  so  lovely,  so  touching, 
and  so  impossible  to  forget. 

Emerson,  on  the  other  hand,  unites  the  intellectual 
quality  with  the  emotional,  fineness  of  form  with 
originality  of  content.  Longfellow  soothes  and 
charms  and  pleases.  Emerson  stimulates  and  in- 
spires. In  one  you  find  a  certain  sensuousncss  and 
sweetness  as  in  music.  In  the  other  there  is  that 
which  energises  the  brain  and  is  a  trumpet-call  to 
action. 

What  is  remarkable  about  both  these  men  is  the 
circumstance  that,  although  their  surroundings  in 
the  formative  period  of  their  lives  were  plain,  pro- 
vincial, and  almost  rustic,  they  both  wrote  in  the 
language  of  a  larger  world — a  language  that  was 


EMERSON  137 

and  still  remains  devoid  of  what  is  local.  Emerson, 
speaking  at  Oxford  or  at  Edinburgh,  would  not  have 
been  recognised  as  a  citizen  of  the  New  World,  Far 
less  would  one  think  of  liim  as  a  rural  Yankee  who  in- 
variably breakfasted  on  pie,  who  picked  peas  in  his 
little  garden,  who  was  regular  in  his  attendance  at 
*'  town  meetings,"  and  who  entered  into  all  the  inter- 
ests of  the  hamlet  where  he  lived.  Matthew  Arnold, 
the  most  fastidious  of  critics,  tells  us  of  the  impres- 
sion made  upon  him  by  the  first  reading  of  Emer- 
son's early  essays: 

There  came  to  us  in  that  old  Oxford  time  a  clear  and  pure 
voice,  which,  for  my  ear,  at  any  rate,  brought  a  strain  as  new 
and  moving  and  unforgettable  as  the  strain  of  Newman  or  Car- 
lyle  or  Goethe.  To  us  at  Oxford,  Emerson  was  but  a  voice 
speaking  from  three  thousand  miles  away.  But  so  well  he 
spoke  that  from  that  time  forth,  Boston  Bay  and  Concord 
were  names  invested  to  my  ear  with  a  sentiment  akin  to 
that  which  invests  for  me  the  names  of  Oxford  and  of 
Weimar. 

It  is  odd,  yet  it  gives  proof  of  the  American  lack 
of  critical  power  at  the  time,  that  Emerson's  own 
countrymen  by  no  means  greeted  him  with  the  same 
enthusiasm.  In  1840,  Dean  Stanley,  meeting  some 
Americans  at  Malta  and  desiring  to  please  them, 
spoke  with  hearty  admiration  of  the  Essays,  which 
had  just  been  published.  Whereupon  the  Americans 
shook  their  heads  and  said  that,  in  the  United  States, 
Emerson  was  thought  to  be  much  too  "  greeny."     It 


138    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

was  tlie  very  perfection  of  his  style  and  the  origi- 
nality of  his  mind  that  made  his  sentences  appeal  with 
far  more  force  to  cultivated  foreigners  than  to  the 
home  public,  which  preferred  the  obvious,  dressed  up 
in  tawdry  rhetoric. 

It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  discover  just  how  Em- 
erson acquired  the  felicitous  touch  that  gives  his 
writings  such  distinction,  the  wealth  of  Illustration 
that  enriches  them,  the  penetration  of  thought  that 
fills  them  with  so  much  power.  He  was  but  an  indif- 
ferent student  In  his  college  days.  His  reading  was 
very  wide,  but  very  desultory.  His  allusions  are 
often  quite  inaccurate.  None  the  less,  in  some  strange 
fashion  he  absorbed  the  essence  of  Platonism  and 
an  understanding  of  the  great  German  philosophers, 
together  with  a  myriad  facts  and  fancies  from  all 
the  world's  best  writers — facts  and  fancies  which  he 
unconsciously  assimilated  so  that  they  gave  bril- 
liancy and  beauty  to  his  own  most  esoteric  thoughts. 

He  was  a  most  unusual  figure,  this  man  of  Con- 
cord. He  lived  a  life  which  touched  the  world  at 
many  points,  though  he  was  scarcely  of  the  world 
himself.  His  consistent  attitude  was  one  of  intellec- 
tual detachment.  He  had  many  friends,  yet  no  one 
really  Icnew  him.  No  one  ever  clapped  him  on  the 
shoulder  and  called  him  Waldo.  There  was  some- 
thing almost  Buddhistic  in  his  serene  aloofness  in 
that  small  community  where  every  one  knew  every- 
body else,  and  where,  for  most  men,  there  was  little 


EMERSON  139 

privacy.  Yet  Emerson  was  quite  apart,  composed 
and  tranquil,  friendly,  but  with  little  heat  of  friend- 
ship. He  seldom  laughed.  He  dishked  loud  laugh- 
ter in  others,  or  loud  speaking.  He  detested  the 
superlative  degree  in  everything. 

Perhaps  this  sensitiveness  may  have  been  partly 
physical  in  its  origin.  Writing  once  to  Carlyle,  he 
used  the  phrase  "  my  vast  debihty."  It  was  surely 
not  a  debihty  of  mind.  It  was  perhaps  a  debility  of 
body  which  made  the  noise  and  bustle  of  what  he 
called  "  this  great,  intelligent,  sensual,  and  avari- 
cious America  "  distasteful  to  him.  Even  in  good 
causes  he  deplored  the  strenuous  attitude.    He  wrote: 

Nature  does  not  like  our  benevolence  or  our  learning  much 
better  tban  she  likes  our  frauds  and  wars.  When  we  come 
out  of  the  caucus,  or  the  bank,  or  the  Abolition  convention, 
or  the  temperance  meeting,  or  the  Transcendental  Club,  into 
the  fields  and  woods,  she  says  to  us:    "So  hot,  my  little  sir?" 

And  thus  to  Emerson  all  the  actualities  of  material 
life  were  more  or  less  a  dream.  At  least,  they  never 
stirred  his  depths.  When,  as  a  clergyman,  he  found 
liiiiisclf  imable,  by  reason  of  conscientious  scruples, 
to  administer  the  sacrament,  he  caused  no  schism 
in  the  rhiirch.  He  merely  told  bis  people  of  his 
rlmnged  belief;  and  when  they  could  not  follow  him, 
he  left  the  pulpit  very  quietly  and  put  asido  tlie  cler- 
ical profession.  Whenever  he  received  offence  in  pri- 
vate life — which  was  but  seldom — he  showed  no  an- 


140    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

gcTy  but  simply  withdrew  into  himself  and  ceased 
thereafter  to  know  the  persons  who  had  offended 
liim.  Tliough  he  sympathised  with  the  Abolition 
movement,  he  took  no  active  part  In  it.  Though  the 
Brook  Farm  experiment  in  socialism  interested  him, 
he  would  not  himself  become  a  member  of  the  broth- 
erhood. Politics  repelled  him.  Of  personal  ambi- 
tion he  had  none. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  and  written  concerning 
the  philosophy  of  Emerson,  and  a  great  deal  of  what 
has  been  said  and  written  is  little  better  than  nebu- 
lous nonsense.  Emerson,  in  truth,  had  no  philoso- 
phy— at  least,  no  system  of  philosophy  which  can  be 
reduced  to  any  definite  form.  He  was  rather  a  great 
fountain  of  isolated  thoughts  which  he  put  forth  in 
essays,  some  of  which  have  no  structural  coherence. 
At  times,  as  in  his  essay  on  "  The  Over-Soul,"  he 
scarcely  apprehended  what  he  wished  to  say,  but 
merely  struggled  amid  a  flood  of  half-shaped  ideas. 
As  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  has  well  expressed  it: 
"  His  paragraphs  are  full  of  brittle  sentences  that 
break  apart  and  are  independent  units,  like  the  frag- 
ments of  a  coral  colony."  Of  course,  his  thoughts 
were  fundamentally  Platonic.  His  quest  was  for 
ideals.  He  had  a  truly  Oriental  belief  in  the  trans- 
migration of  souls,  and  this  was  supplemented  by  a 
kind  of  pantheism ;  since  he  believed  that  God  is  om- 
nipresent, that  He  pervades  every  living  thing,  and 
that  our  souls  are  but  a  part  of  the  Divine  Soul  which 


EMERSON  141 

is  the  very  essence  of  the  universe.  Philosophically, 
there  is  nothing  new  in  Emerson.  What  made  him 
so  remarkable  a  figure  in  his  time  and  country  was 
his  splendid  advocacy  of  free  thought,  of  the  right 
of  every  mind  to  think  precisely  as  it  would.  It  was 
because  of  this  that  Carlyle  wrote  to  him  with  a 
touch  of  Scottish  condescension :  *'  You  are  a  new 
era,  my  man,  in  your  new,  huge  country." 

It  was  his  championship  of  intellectual  freedom 
that  burst  through  the  petty,  narrow,  provincial  way 
of  thinking  which  had  clamped  New  England  in  a 
strangling  grip.  His  doctrine  worked  like  new  yeast 
upon  the  brains  of  those  who  heard  and  read  him. 
Some  of  these  brains  were  very  feeble  brains,  and 
they  were  responsible  for  much  babbling  and  for 
much  of  the  absurdity  of  Transcendentalism.  The 
cheap  cleverness  of  Margaret  Fuller  and  the  bore- 
some,  windy  platitudes  of  Bronson  Alcott  are  rather 
favourable  specimens  of  the  occasional  miscarriage 
of  Emerson's  inspiration.  But  in  the  end,  his  influ- 
ence was  tonic  and  stimulating;  and  after  he  had 
taught  for  many  years,  his  influence  led  his  country- 
men into  a  wider  world  of  thought,  just  as  it  made 
for  courage,  for  self-reliance,  and  for  a  love  of  truth 
eternal. 

It  may  seem  odd  to  couple  the  names  of  Emerson 
and  Walt  Wlilhnan,  since  no  two  human  beings 
could  have  llvrd  more  different  lives;  yet  each  of 
these  two  men  gave  his  supreme  devotion  to  the  doc- 


112    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

trine  of  an  intense  individualism.  Whitman,  how- 
ever, seems  to  feel  only  the  intoxication  of  physical 
well-being.  He  is  drunken  with  the  pride  of  flesh 
and  blood,  the  joy  of  sense,  the  glory  of  the  outward 
man.  Emerson,  striking  a  far  higher  note,  yields 
not  to  Whitman  in  his  exaltation  of  humanity.  But 
to  him,  man  is  not  a  mere  eating,  drinking,  loafing, 
sprawling  creature,  likening  himself  to  cattle  because 
they  are  not  "  respectable,"  and  approving  lust  be- 
cause untamed  nature  prompts  it.  Listen  to  Emer- 
son and  see  how  gloriously  he  rises  above  the  purely 
sensual  view  of  life: 


Trust  thyself:  every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string. 
We  are  now  men,  and  must  accept  from  the  highest  minds 
the  same  transcendent  destiny;  and  not  minors  and  invalids 
in  a  protected  corner,  nor  cowards  fleeing  before  a  revolu- 
tion, but  guides,  redeemers  and  benefactors,  obeying  the  Al- 
mighty effort,  and  advancing  on  Chaos  and  the  Dark. 

The  nonchalance  of  boys,  who  are  sure  of  a  dinner  and 
would  disdain  as  much  as  a  lord  to  do  or  say  aught  to  con- 
ciliate one,  is  the  healthy  attitude  of  human  nature. 

We  are  wiser  than  we  know.  If  we  will  not  interfere  with 
our  thought,  but  will  act  entirely,  or  see  how  the  thing  stands 
in  God,  we  know  the  particular  thing,  and  everything,  and 
every  man.  For  the  Maker  of  all  things  and  all  persons 
stands  behind  us  and  casts  His  dread  omniscience  through 
us    over   things. 

Xo  society  can  ever  be  so  large  as  one  man.  He  in  his 
friendship,  in  his  natural  and  momentary  association,  doubles 
or  multiplies  himself;  but  in  the  hour  in  which  he  mortgages 
himself  to  two,  or  ten,  or  twenty,  he  dwarfs  himself  below 
the  stature  of  one. 


EMERSON  143 

That  country  is  the  fairest  which  is  inhabited  by  the  noblest 
minds. 

Insist  on  yourself;  never  imitate.  Every  great  man  is  unique. 
Do  that  which  is  assigned  to  you,  and  you  can  not  hope 
too  much,  or  dare  too  much. 

Let  a  man,  then,  know  his  worth  and  keep  things  under  his 
feet. 

Here  is  a  proclamation  of  the  grandeur  and  dig- 
nity of  man,  as  forcible  as  Whitman's,  yet  delivered 
as  it  were  in  clear  tones  from  a  mountain-peak,  while 
Whitman  bellows  vociferously  in  a  valley. 

These  sentences  alone  would  give  one  who  had  not 
read  him  a  very  good  understanding  of  the  rare 
quality  which  Emerson  possessed  of  concentrating  a 
pungent  thought  within  the  compass  of  a  few  words. 
He  teaches  in  aphorisms.  As  I  have  already  said, 
his  essays  seem  often  a  collection  of  unrelated  units. 
One  might  liken  each  essay  to  a  quiver  filled  with 
arrows.  Every  shaft  flies  forth  unerringly  to  its 
mark.  It  is  a  mere  accident  that  they  all  leap,  as  it 
were,  from  a  single  bowstring.  Each  sentence  is 
often  in  its  efTcct  equivalent  to  a  long  disquisition 
by  a  writer  whose  phrases  are  less  pregnant.  I  can 
think  of  no  parallel  to  certain  of  these  papers  except, 
perhaps,  in  some  of  the  Epistles  of  Horace,  where 
maxim  after  maxim,  and  epigram  after  epigram, 
strike  the  mind  as  a  succession  of  lightning-flashes 
strikes  the  vision.  Take,  for  exainplf%  the  famous 
essays  on  "Compensation"  and  "(Circles,"  and  note 
these  remarkable  sayings  which,   as  you  pass   from 


in    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

page  to  page,  scintillate  like  a  riviere  of  diamonds 
in  a  golden  setting: 

Every  excess  causes  a  defect;  every  defect  an  excess. 
Every  sweet  hath  its  sour;  every  evil  its  good.  Every  faculty 
which  is  a  receiver  of  pleasure  has  an  equal  penalty  put  on  its 
abuse.  For  every  grain  of  wit,  there  is  a  grain  of  folly.  For 
everything  you  have  missed,  you  have  gained  something  else; 
and  for  everything  you  gain,  you  lose  sometliing. 

Nature  hates  monopolies  and  exceptions. 

The   only  sin   is   limitation. 

The  world  globes  itself  in  a  drop  of  dew. 

Character  makes  an  overpowering  present.  Character  dulls 
the  power  of  particular  events.  When  we  see  the  conqueror, 
we  do  not  think  much  of  every  one  battle  or  success.  We  see 
that  we  had  exaggerated  the  difficulty.     It  was  easy  to  him. 

Thus  is  the  universe  alive.  All  things  are  moral.  That 
soul  which  within  us  is  a  sentiment,  outside  of  us  is  a  law.  The 
dice  of  God  are  always  loaded. 

Our  strength  grows  out  of  our  weakness. 

A  great  man  is  always  willing  to  be  little. 

Blame  is  safer  than  praise.  I  hate  to  be  defended  in  a 
newspaper. 

The  man  is  all. 

Every  evil  to  which  we  do  not  succumb  is  a  benefactor. 
We  gain  the  strength  of  the  temptations  we  resist, 

Horace  is  the  most  quoted  writer  of  classical 
antiquity.  Emer.son  is  certainly  the  most  quoted 
writer  who  holds  a  place  in  American  literature.  It 
is  probably  to  the  fact  that  these  single,  poignant 
thoughts  of  his  have  found  a  lodgment  in  so  many 
minds  that  we  may  ascribe  the  power  which  he  has 
exerted  for  several  generations.  He  may  be  criti- 
cised for  unevenness,  for  a  lack  of  philosopliic  sys- 


EMERSON  145 

tem,  and  for  many  other  things.  Yet  all  such  criti- 
cism is  but  the  cheep  of  insects  when  we  consider  how 
splendidly  this  one  writer  has  combated  the  forces  of 
materialism,  how  he  has  taught  men  to  look  upward 
to  the  ideal  truth,  and  how  he  has  given  a  multitude 
of  lofty  thoughts  to  instil  nobility  in  minds  which 
would  have  been  ignoble  had  he  never  lived  and 
written. 

So  far  as  our  native  literature  has  advanced  in 
its  gradual  evolution,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Emerson  to-day  is  the  very  foremost  of  those  who 
have  shed  lustre  on  its  annals. 


THACKERAY  AND   "VANITY 
FAIR" 


IX 

THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR" 

To  set  oneself  the  task  of  writing  about  Vanity 
Fair  recalls  Schopenhauer's  famous  saying :  "  Every- 
thing has  been  thought,  everytliing  has  been  done, 
everything  has  been  written,  everything  has  been 
said."  It  would  not  be  possible,  for  example,  to  dis- 
cover anything  in  Becky  Sharp  which  had  escaped 
the  observation  of  a  host  of  critics  long  ago.  From 
Dobbin  and  Amelia  and  Lord  Steyne,  with  his  buck- 
teeth  and  great  jarring  laugh,  and  old  Osborne,  and 
the  gluttonous  Jos,  down  to  Kirsch,  the  courier, 
and  the  frowsy  German  students  dabbling  their  blond 
moustaches  in  their  beer-mugs  at  Pumpernickel,  all 
the  people  in  the  book  have  been  held  beneath  the 
microscope  since  the  time  when  they  were  first  created 
for  us,  sixty  years  ago.  There  is  not  one  of  them 
that  lacks  the  breath  of  life ;  but  for  this  very  reason 
they  are  too  familiar  to  need  interpretation.  Like 
old  acquaintances,  we  have  come  to  know  them  down 
to  the  very  last  detail.  We  do  not  dwell  upon  their 
virtues  or  deplore  their  vices.  We  simply  ac- 
cept them  as  they  arc  and  take  them  quite  for 
granted. 

Nevertheless,  of  the  book  itself  there  remains,  per- 
haps,   something    still    to   say.      The    most    curious 

149 


150    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

tliliiff  about  it  is  the  circumstance  that,  when  Thack- 
cray  set  out  to  write  it,  he  did  not  in  the  least  sup- 
pose that  he  was  going  to  produce  a  masterpiece. 
He  had  been  scribbling  nearly  all  his  life,  often  for 
the  sheer  love  of  self-expression,  and  later,  after  he 
had  lost  his  fortune,  because  of  the  money  which  his 
pen  would  bring  him.  As  a  college  boy,  he  had  writ- 
ten skits  in  verse  and  prose  for  an  undergraduate 
journal.  Afterward,  even  while  he  imagined  that  he 
was  studying  art  in  France,  he  was  filling  volumi- 
nous note-books  with  his  impressions  of  men  and 
things  and  places.  At  twenty-five  he  had  gambled 
away  a  very  considerable  sum  of  money,  and  was 
thrown  upon  his  own  resources.  It  was  then  that 
he  took  to  writing  for  the  magazines  and  newspa- 
pers— especially  for  Fraser's  and  for  Punch.  He 
even  consented  to  contribute  to  a  newspaper  in  New- 
York — the  Corsair — for  the  sum  of  a  guinea  a 
column. 

Nearly  everything  he  wrote  was  in  a  vein  of  irony 
or  humour.  He  took  nothing  very  seriously,  least 
of  all  himself  and  his  own  writings.  What  he  ac- 
tually valued  most  was  his  bent  for  art.  This  is  only 
another  example  of  what  we  so  often  see — the  am- 
bition of  a  gifted  man  to  shine  in  some  sphere  other 
than  that  for  which  his  native  genius  fits  him. 
Thackeray  really  thought  himself  an  artist  of  the 
brush  and  pencil,  and  he  was  hurt  when  Dickens 
would  not  employ  him  as  an  illustrator  for  the  early 
books  of  "  Boz."    He  was  pleased  that  Punch  would 


THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR"    151 

accept  and  publish  his  faulty  drawings.  So  Dick- 
ens, in  his  turn,  valued  more  the  perfunctory  praise 
wliich  he  won  in  amateur  theatricals  than  he  did 
the  true  fame  which  came  to  him  spontaneously  as 
an  author. 

Finally  after  having  written  an  immense  deal  that 
is  hardly  worth  recalling,  and  some  other  things 
which  do  not  deserve  remembrance,  Thackeray  put 
forth,  on  New  Year's  Day  in  1847,  the  first  number 
of  Vanity  Fair,  in  a  yellow  wrapper.  He  was  led  to 
begin  a  story  to  appear  in  parts  by  the  great  suc- 
cess which  Dickens  had  won  in  the  same  way.  But 
Vanity  Fair  at  first  seemed  likely  to  be  an  utter  dis- 
appointment. When  four  numbers  had  been  issued, 
the  publishers  were  so  assured  of  its  failure  that 
they  proposed  to  discontinue  it.  It  is  probable 
that  Thackeray  himself  had  no  great  hope.  Then, 
with  the  fifth  number,  the  tide  turned,  and  all  liter- 
ary London  began  talking  of  the  story  which  in 
spirit  and  in  manner  was  something  genuinely  new. 

Nevertheless,  if  it  succeeded,  it  did  so  almost  In 
its  author's  own  despite.  Thackeray  had  really 
planned  it  as  a  burlesque.  If  any  one  will  compara 
the  first  edition  of  it  with  the  form  in  which  we  have 
it  now,  It  will  be  plain  enough  that  the  novel  was 
meant  to  be  written  in  a  comic  vein.  Whole  passages 
that  were  farcical  were  afterward  eliminated.  In 
one  of  the  earlier  chapters,  for  instance,  the  author 
stops  tho  progress  of  the  tale  to  explain,  with  a  sort 
of  side-wink  to  the  reader,  tliat,  liad  he  chosen,  he 


152    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 


iiiiglit  have  written  the  adventures  of  Jos  and  Becky 
and  Amelia  in  one  of  two  other  manners.  Thus, 
he  says,  he  might  have  promoted  all  his  characters 
to  the  peerage;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  he  might 
have  copied  the  Eulwer-Lytton  of  his  time  and  made 
them  lackeys  and  roughs  and  burglars,  who  patter 
thieves'  argot — "  beladle  your  glumbanions  and  bim- 
bolc  your  chlckeys  " — whatever  that  may  mean.  He 
even  writes  in  a  little  scene  as  a  specimen  of  what  he 
could  do  in  the  latter  genre  had  he  but  chosen.  As 
he  went  on,  however,  his  "  novel  without  a  hero  "  took 
strong  hold  of  him.  He  afterwards  confessed  that 
he  "  wasn't  going  to  write  it  in  that  way  when  he 
began."  He  started  out  to  perpetrate  a  carica- 
ture. He  ended  by  producing  a  finished  painting. 
The  reason  why  Vanity  Fair  succeeded  at  the 
time  is  to  be  found  in  its  freshness  of  manner.  The 
historical  romance,  which  had  been  so  splendidly 
developed  by  Scott,  had  grown  stale  in  the  hands  of 
G.  P.  R.  James,  Harrison  Ainsworth,  and  a  hundred 
smaller  men.  The  sentimental  romance  pure  and 
simple  had  reached  the  verge  of  mawklshness  with 
Miss  Landon  and  Bulwcr-Lytton.  The  latter  had 
also  led  the  ranks  of  writers  who  revelled  in  low  life 
and  the  psychology  of  crime.  Then  upon  the  scene 
came  Thackeray,  to  give  the  English-speaking  people 
a  novel  of  manners,  of  social  experiences,  of  life  as 
men  and  women  of  the  world  beheld  it.  Every  one 
had  become  tired  of  "  fine  writing,"  and  Thackeray 


THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR"    153 

gave  them  good  writing  instead — writing  that  was 
often  half  colloquial  and  still  more  often  wholly  so. 
Men  read  him  with  that  sense  of  relief  which,  in  an 
earlier  generation,  they  had  felt  in  passing  from  the 
rhodomontade  of  Mrs.  RadclifFc  and  her  school  to 
the  sturdy,  vigorous  manner  of  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
But  Thackeray  pushed  the  easy  style  a  stage  farther. 
He  left  rhetoric  alone  and  spoke  in  that  level,  easy 
tone  which  marks  the  talk  of  the  club  smokinn;- 
room  rather  than  the  library  of  the  professional  man 
of  letters.  It  was  sophisticated  writing,  but  still 
it  had  the  effectiveness  of  simplicity. 

The  men  and  the  women  who  appear  in  Vanity 
Fair  are  also,  if  not  themselves  sophisticated,  at 
least  seen  through  sophisticated  eyes.  Thackeray 
called  the  book  "  a  novel  without  a  hero."  It  is  just 
as  truly  a  novel  without  a  heroine,  at  least  in  the 
old  sense  of  that  word.  There  is,  indeed,  nothing 
heroic  in  any  of  the  characters.  There  is  not  one 
of  them  who  is  free  from  vice  or  folly  or  from  some 
petty  failing.  Thackeray  himself  declared  that  he 
meant  to  make  "  a  set  of  people  living  without  God 
in  the  vrorld."  He  did  not  really  do  this ;  yet,  none 
the  less,  he  has  created  a  set  of  people  who  are  always 
far  below  the  level  on  which  we  can  unfcignedly  ad- 
mire them.  Amelia  Scdlcy,  for  example,  is  almost 
worse  than  Becky  Sharp.  She  is  quite*  as  selfish,  and 
she  has  no  brains.  Slic  can  be  maudlin  over  the 
cockney  dandy  who  married  her  almost  against  his 


151    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

will,  and  she  can  weep  over  her  little  son,  who  is  as 
selfish  as  his  father  was ;  but  she  can  not  understand 
the  lo3\al  love  of  an  honest  man.  She  will  use  it  un- 
scrupulously for  her  own  convenience,  and  she  will 
give  it  no  reward  except  at  the  last,  when  she  is 
forced  to  take  it  because  she  needs  its  strong  pro- 
tection. Thackeray  never  intended  to  let  Dobbin 
marry  Amelia ;  but  he  was  urged  to  do  so  by  his 
readers  until  at  last  he  yielded,  saying  pettishly: 

"  Well,  he  shall  marry  her ;  but  when  he  has  got 
her,  he  shall  not  find  her  worth  the  having." 

What  a  wonderful  panorama  of  human  weakness 
is  unrolled  before  our  eyes  in  the  chapters  of  Vanity 
Fair!  Try  to  recall  one  character  whom  you  can 
admire  without  reservation.  Dobbin,  perhaps,  stands 
forth  a  finer  person  than  the  rest.  In  character  and 
in  mind  he  makes  a  strong  appeal ;  yet  his  awkward- 
ness and  loutishness  of  bearing  are  continually  harped 
upon.  Again  and  again  he  appears  to  be  entirely 
ridiculous.  His  foolish  infatuation  for  Amelia  almost 
makes  one's  blood  boil,  it  is  so  utterly  unjustified. 
For  the  rest,  think  of  the  miserly  and  clownish  old 
baronet,  Sir  Pitt  Crawley ;  his  fox-hunting,  hard- 
drinking  parson  brother;  his  graceless,  selfish,  and 
bewiggcd  old  sister,  and  his  two  sons,  one  a  dissolute 
bully,  and  the  other  a  feeble  prig.  Think  of  Wenham, 
the  smooth  pander,  of  the  senile  old  general  just 
before  Waterloo,  and  of  the  cowardly  and  glutton- 
ous Jos  Sedley! 


THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR"    155 

It  must  be  confessed  that  in  tliis  maze  of  living 
meannesses,  Becky  Sharp  stands  out  by  contrast 
almost  a  good  woman.  At  least,  she  is  consistent 
from  beginning  to  end.  If  she  is  selfish,  she  is  thor- 
oughly good-natured.  She  is  fighting  for  her  own 
hand,  but  she  does  so  with  wit  and  grace  and  astound- 
ing cleverness.  At  the  last  she  is  willing  even  to 
efface  herself  to  help  Amelia,  although,  of  course, 
she  does  so  only  after  Amelia's  environment  begins  to 
bore  her.  When  you  close  the  book  you  rather  sym- 
pathise with  this  free-lance  of  society ;  for  she  is  a 
gallant  little  campaigner,  and  she  has  had  to  deal 
with  persons  who  are  worse  than  she,  or  else  infinitely 
stupid.  One  resents  a  little  the  fact  that  she  fooled 
poor  old  Miss  Briggs,  because  Miss  Briggs  was 
fooled  so  very  easily ;  but  that  she  fooled  George 
Osborne  and  the  Crawleys,  young  and  old,  is  only 
fitting.  Her  magnificent  insolence  to  Lady  Bare- 
acres  in  the  hotel  courtyard  at  Brussels  is  really  de- 
lightful. And  when  she  actually  fools  Lord  Steyne 
our  admiration  is  unqualified.  Indeed,  as  the  reader 
will  remember,  it  extorted  admiration  from  that 
liardened  sinner  himself  when  he  found  out  that 
Becky  had  by  tears  and  pitiful  pleas  got  money  from 
him,  ostensibly  to  pay  Miss  Briggs,  and  had  then 
kept  it  for  herself. 

"  WJiat  an  ncromplishrd  little  devil  it  is!"  tlioujrht  he. 
"What  a  splendid  actress  and  manager!  She  had  almost  got 
a  second  supi)ly  out  of  mc  the  other  day,  with  her  coaxing 


156    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

wnys.  She  beats  all  the  women  I  have  ever  seen  in  the  course 
of  all  my  well-spent  life.  They  are  babies  compared  to  her. 
I  am  a  greenhorn  myself,  and  a  fool  in  her  hands — an  old 
fool.     She  is  unsurpassable  in  lies!" 

His  Lordship's  admiration  for  Becky  rose  immeasurably  at 
this  proof  of  her  cleverness.  Getting  the  money  was  nothing 
— but  getting  double  the  sum  she  wariled,  and  paying  nobody — • 
it  was  a  magnificent  stroke. 

From  Thackeray's  standpoint,  he  was,  after  all, 
merely  stripping  off  the  false  pretences,  the  hypo- 
critical masks,  behind  which  every  one  must  hide 
himself  while  in  the  confines  of  Vanity  Fair.  The 
picture  is  true  to  life  itself,  though  it  is  not  true  to 
all  of  life.  In  this  respect  Thackeray  Is  like  Mau- 
passant. Every  human  being  whom  he  draws  is 
drawn  with  a  pitiless  realism.  Each  separate  impres- 
sion is  veracious.  The  only  false  thing  is  the  tacit 
assumption  that  all  the  world  is  peopled  by  such 
types  as  we  discover  in  Vanity  Fair,  and  that  there 
are  none  who  are  wholly  pure-minded,  generous,  and 
noble. 

Thackeray,  in  his  book,  has  looked  at  human  na- 
ture, not  face  to  face  and  in  the  open  air,  but  rather 
through  the  bay-window  of  a  club.  His  philosophy 
is  the  philosophy  of  the  man  who  lives  in  clubs,  and 
who  listens  to  the  talk  which  comes  buzzing  to  the 
ear  in  club-room  corners.  It  is  talk  made  up  of 
risque  stories,  of  hinted  scandal,  of  cynical  observa- 
tion and  of  worldly  aphorisms.  So  far  as  it  goes, 
it  conveys  the  truth  while  it  looks  only  at  the  seamy 


THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR"    157 

side  of  character.  It  questions  motives  with  a  sneer. 
It  dissects  and  vivisects  and  analyses  with  consum- 
mate cleverness.  It  strips  away  illusions,  and  pries 
into  hidden  meannesses.  But  it  takes  no  account  of 
another  and  fairer  world  in  which  men  are  not  de- 
bauchees, or  card-sharps,  or  tuft-hunters,  or  snobs 
and  social  climbers,  but  where  they  believe  in  right 
and  justice  and  in  God,  where  they  treat  women  with 
respect,  and  where  women  are  deserving  of  respect. 
Vanity  Fair  displays  for  us  a  microcosm.  Its  art  is 
microcosmic. 

It  was  not  unnatural  that  Thackeray  should  view 
life  from  this  standpoint.  He  himself  was  essentially 
an  inhabitant  of  clubs.  The  insanity  of  his  wife  had 
deprived  him  of  a  home.  He  had  roamed  about  in 
the  Bohemia  of  Paris  and  the  Bohemia  of  London ; 
and  the  club-window  was  the  nest  on  which  he  set- 
tled down  as  other  men  repose  before  their  firesides. 
Later,  when  many  homes  were  open  to  him,  he  knew  a 
world  which  had  not  forgotten  God ;  and  then  we 
find  him  writing  in  a  nobler  vein,  quite  as  rich  in  ob- 
8er\'ation  and  richer  far  in  a  perception  of  what  is 
fine  and  true.  The  Newcomcs  shows  far  less  the  in- 
fluence of  the  club  fumoir.  In  Henri/  Esmond  we 
breathe  the  free  air  of  the  greater  world  which 
reaches  beyond  Ilydc  Park  and  Piccadilly,  beyond 
London,  and  even  beyond  Knglnnd. 

The  comparison  of  Thackeray  and  Dickens  is  an 
old,  old  literary  game.     As  it  is  often  carried  on, 


l.'JS    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

nothing  can  be  more  absurd.     From  the  standpoint 
of  their  art,  in  a  limited  way,  it  is  like  comparing 
the  /Eneid  with  the  Binomial  Theorem.     Indeed,  the 
two  men  and  their  work  are  not  properly  comparable 
at  all.     They  can  not,  so  to  speak,  be  reduced  to  a 
common   denominator.     Yet,  in  a  broad  way,  some 
comparison  may  be  instructive.     Both  of  them  were 
intensely  English;  but  Thackeray  was  an  English- 
man of  London,  while  Dickens  was  an  Englishman  of 
England ;  and  his  imagination,  grotesque  and  strained 
as  it  sometimes  is,  reaches  out  beyond  the  sphere  of 
the  Particular  up  into  the  illimitable  spaces  of  the 
Universal.     His  pathos  may  be  at  times  theatrical. 
His  humour  may  be  often  farcical.    Yet,  in  his  might- 
ier moments  he  appeals  to  something  to  which  every 
human   heart    responds.      Thackeray,    on    the   other 
hand,  is  technically  the  greater  artist.     He  is  the 
truest   realist   that   England   has   produced,   except 
his  contemporary,  Trollope.     But  in  Vanity  Fair  his 
realism  is  a  realism  that  is  shrunken  to  a  single  cor- 
ner of  his   country.     It  is  not  large  enough   and 
broad  enough  to  comprehend  the  hearts  of  men  and 
women  everywhere.     Vanity  Fair  is  a  wonderful  ex- 
ample of  urban  literature.     Yet  unless  you  are  a 
Londoner,  unless  you  are  worldly-wise,  unless  you 
have  yourself  a  touch  of  cynicism  in  your  nature, 
you  will  not  greatly  care  for  Thackeray.     To  prefer 
Dickens  to  him  is  to  show  yourself  more  broadly 
human. 


THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR"    159 

This  is  why  both  the  young  and  the  old  can  always 
find  in  Dickens  something  that  will  please  and  touch 
them.  And  this  is  why  thousands  upon  thousands 
turn  away  from  Thackeray.  To  enjoy  Thackeray, 
you  must  have  a  certain  milieu;  whereas,  to  enjoy 
Dickens,  you  need  only  have  the  mind  and  heart  and 
soul  which  belong  to  every  normal  human  being. 
Thackeray  is  little  read  outside  of  England,  and 
among  sophisticated  Americans  who  know  English 
life  and  London  life.  Dickens  is  read  all  over  the 
world,  in  many  countries  and  in  many  languages. 
Foreigners  are  often  puzzled  by  his  burlesque.  They 
are  sometimes  startled  by  his  humour.  His  pathos 
affects  them  in  a  way  far  different  from  that  in 
which  it  moves  the  Anglo-Saxon.  Yet,  none  the  less, 
they  read  him  when  they  have  never  even  heard  of 
Thackeray ;  and  thus  they  pay  unconscious  tribute 
to  the  sort  of  genius  that  is  universal. 

Here  is  an  odd  fact  which  proves  how  impossible 
it  is  for  mere  environment  to  make  of  any  man  that 
which  he  was  not  made  by  nature  at  his  birth.  Thack- 
eray, born  in  India,  long  resident  in  France,  a  visitor 
at  Weimar,  where  he  met  Goethe — Thackeray,  widely 
travellod  in  the  East — was  far  more  insular,  far  more 
local  than  Dickens,  who,  when  he  wrote  his  greatest 
novels,  had  scarcely  ever  been  outside  his  native  land. 
Thackeray  could  draw  individual  Frenchmen  and 
Germans  from  life  with  the  deft  touch  of  a  portrait- 
painter.     In   The  Nexvcomes,  M.  do  Florae  is  deli- 


iCO    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

ciously  French,  yet  Thackeray  could  never  have 
given  us  the  impressive,  overwhehning  picture  of 
France  in  the  throes  of  the  Revolution  which  Dickens 
spreads  before  us  in  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities. 

To  the  last  Thackeray  remained  the  Englishman  of 
London.  He  never  understood  the  French.  His 
judgments  on  them  are  oftentimes  absurd.  He  set 
Balzac  far  below  such  second-rate  French  authors 
as  Bernard  and  Reybaud,  whom  the  world  has  long 
ago  forgotten.  He  declares  that  he  could  not  read 
Dumas  "  without  a  risk  of  lighting  upon  horrors." 
He  is  sometimes  still  more  smug,  as  when  in  Athens 
he  sees  nothing  but  its  shabbiness,  "  which  beats 
Ireland."  His  smugness  is  equally  apparent  in  the 
pages  of  Vanity  Fair,  whenever  he  breaks  off  his 
marvellous  portrait-painting  to  preach  sermous,  or 
again  as  where  he  spoils  a  passage  of  fine  pathos 
with  a  sort  of  cynic  leer,  so  that,  as  Mr.  Whibley 
says,  "  he  seems  to  snigger  amid  sobs."  It  is  equally 
true  that  he  often  sobs  amid  sniggers.  He  can  not 
be  the  artist  pure  and  simple — all  of  one  piece,  con- 
sistent, whole.  He  is  a  product  of  the  clubs,  and  yet 
one  thinks  of  him,  perhaps,  as  sneaking  out  of  his 
club  to  appease  his  conscience  with  an  evening  in  a 
Wcslcyan  chapel.  This  would  be  commendable  did 
he  go  boldly  to  the  chapel ;  but  he  certainly  does  not 
do  that.  He  discovers  his  place  of  worship  in  some 
remote  back  alley  where  his  fine  friends  will  not  see 
him ;  and  then,  returning  and  sitting  once  more  in 


THACKERAY    AND    "VANITY    FAIR"   l6l 

his  club-window,  he  will  light  a  fresh  cigar  and  sneer 
at  the  devout. 

Vanity  Fair  is  one  of  the  greatest  books  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  but  it  belongs  to  purely  English  lit- 
erature, and  not  to  the  great  masterpieces  which  the 
whole  world  owns  and  to  which  it  gives  an  unforced 
admiration.  If  you  can  breathe  its  atmosphere,  you 
will  read  it  over  and  over  to  the  end  of  life.  Other- 
wise its  author  will  be  to  you  simply  a  remarkable 
English  novelist  whom  Englishmen  will  always  place 
in  the  first  rank  of  their  fiction-writers. 


ANTHONY   TROLLOPS 


ANTHONY  TROLLOPE 

Whatever  else  may  be  said  or  written  concerning 
Anthony  Trollope,  one  thing  at  least  must  be  con- 
ceded— that  of  all  writers  of  British  fiction  he  is 
the  most  typically  English.  A  famous  passage  writ- 
ten by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  in  1860,  while  Trol- 
lope's  reputation  was  still  wholly  insular,  has  been 
often  quoted,  because  it  gives  in  the  fewest  possible 
words  tlie  truest  estimate  of  Trollopc's  literary  work. 
Trollope  himself  in  his  Autobiography  has  cited  it 
with  pleasure,  and  it  may  well  be  repeated  here : 

Have  you  ever  read  the  novels  of  Anthonj  Trollope?  They 
precisely  suit  my  taste — solid  and  substantial,  written  on 
the  strength  of  beef  and  through  the  inspiration  of  ale,  and 
just  as  real  as  if  some  giant  had  hewn  a  great  lump  out 
of  the  earth  and  put  it  under  a  glass  case,  with  all  the  in- 
habitants going  about  their  daily  business,  and  not  suspect- 
ing that  they  were  being  made  a  show  of.  And  these  books 
are  just  as  English  as  a  beefsteak.  It  needs  an  English 
residence  to  make  them  thoroughly  comprehensible;  but  still 
I  think  that  their  human  nature  would  give  them  success  any- 
where. 

This  marvellously  apt  and  felicitously  worded 
piece  of  criticism  contains  two  points  that  arc  essen- 
tial to  a  thorough  understanding  of  Anthony  Trol- 
lope and  of  his  place  in  the  history  of  English  letters. 

165 


166    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

First  of  all,  it  makes  clear  the  intensely  national 
character  of  his  realism ;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
it  recognises  the  fact  that  his  art  can  give  us  some- 
thing broader  and  deeper  than  what  is  purely  na- 
tional, since  it  is  an  art  which  finds  its  ultimate 
source  in  a  profound  and  comprehensive  knowledge 
of  humanity. 

In  order  to  appreciate  and  explain  the  enduring 
existence  of  Trollope's  finest  work,  one  must  know 
something  of  the  man  himself,  of  his  training,  of  his 
life,  of  his  surroundings,  and  more  especially  of  his 
own  character  and  temperament.  There  is,  indeed, 
a  striking  contrast  to  be  found  between  the  man  as 
others  knew  him  in  the  casual  intercourse  of  daily 
life,  and  the  inner  man  as  he  revealed  himself  in  that 
curiously  frank,  and  at  times  pathetic,  series  of  con- 
fessions which  was  given  to  the  public  only  after  his 
death.  The  man,  in  external  things,  was  largely  the 
creation  of  his  environment.  He  was  a  bluff,  self- 
assertive,  dogmatic,  thoroughly  aggressive  English- 
man, brusque,  burly,  money-loving,  and  singularly 
matter-of-fact,  so  that  even  among  his  own  country- 
men and  the  men  of  his  own  set  he  was  never  gener- 
ally popular.  The  man  who  dwelt  within,  however, 
and  whom  only  his  most  cherished  intimates  ever 
really  knew,  was  genial,  tender-hearted,  kindly,  and, 
more  than  that,  intensely  sensitive  to  all  the  pain  and 
all  the  pathos  of  human  life.  Both  sides  of  his  nature 
arc  felt  in  what  he  wrote,  and  both  were  necessary  to 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  l67 

his  greatness  as  an  author.  He  had  power  and  force ; 
he  had  humour  and  a  rich  vein  of  wholesome  English 
fun ;  he  had  insight  into  character  and  motive ;  and, 
finally,  he  had  a  wide  and  accurate  first-hand  knowl- 
edge of  men  and  women,  gained  from  the  circum- 
stances of  his  various  vocations. 

Anthony  Trollope  was  bom  in  London  in  the  year 
1815.  His  father  was  a  gentleman,  a  scholar,  a 
former  Oxford  man,  and,  at  the  time  of  Trollope's 
birth,  a  Chancery  barrister  of  some  ability  in  his 
profession,  but  one  from  whom  fortune  had  withheld 
the  successful  temperament.  Born  to  a  small  for- 
tune, he  muddled  it  away;  trained  to  a  learned  pro- 
fession, he  offended  and  repelled  his  clients  by  his 
execrable  temper.  By  the  time  that  young  Anthony 
was  old  enough  to  enter  upon  the  period  of  his  educa- 
tion, the  elder  Trollope  had  been  forced  to  give  up  his 
I^ondon  home  and  to  take  shelter  in  a  wretched  farm- 
house on  land  which  is  accurately  described  in  Orlcy 
Farm.  The  mother  of  the  future  novelist  was  a 
clever,  jovial,  coarse-grained  woman,  with  a  natural 
gift  of  observation — powers  which  arc  shown  in  her 
most  unfair  yet  eminently  readable  account  of  the 
domestic  manners  of  the  Americans,  and  in  a  num- 
ber of  novels  which,  though  hastily  and  superficially 
composed,  enjoyed  a  certain  temporary  vogue.  When 
Anthony  was  of  an  age  to  be  sent  to  school,  his 
mother  had  not  yet  begun  to  write,  and  the  fortunes 
of  the  family  were  at  their  lowest  ebb.     lie  was  en- 


168    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

tcrcd  at  Harrow,  where  he  passed  three  most  unhappy 
years,  and  which  he  left  with  a  reputation  for  sloven- 
liness of  person  and  invincible  dulness  of  mind.  This 
reputation  was  not  redeemed  at  a  private  school  to 
•which  he  was  transferred,  nor  at  Winchester  College, 
where  the  poverty  of  his  parents  made  him  contempt- 
ible not  only  in  the  eyes  of  his  fellows,  but  in  those  of 
his  masters  also.  Big,  ugly,  and  uncouth,  he  skulked 
about  the  place,  feeling  himself  to  be  despised,  ill- 
dressed,  and  dirty ;  and  ere  he  left  he  had  acquired 
a  conviction  that  his  life  was  destined  to  be  an  utter 
failure.  The  story  of  his  next  few  years  is  pain- 
ful reading;  for  it  is  a  story  of  hopeless  effort,  of 
unrelieved  dejection,  of  indignities,  of  failure.  Ho 
tried  to  study,  but  for  study  he  appears  to  have  had 
no  aptitude.  He  tried  to  teach,  but  he  had  neither 
knowledge  nor  self-confidence.  He  endeavoured  twice 
to  win  a  sizarship  at  Cambridge  and  again  at  Oxford, 
but  failed  ignominiously  in  both  attempts ;  so  that  he 
gave  up  once  for  all  the  notion  of  a  university  career. 
It  was  at  this  period  that  a  gleam  of  light  appeared, 
almost  for  the  first  time  in  his  life.  His  mother's 
book  of  travels  in  America  succeeded  with  the  public, 
60  that  within  a  few  months  she  received  from  her 
publishers  the  sum  of  £800.  The  family's  pecuniary 
difficulties  were  somewhat  lightened;  yet  none  the  less 
there  was  illness  and  there  were  debts,  and  finally 
there  was  death ;  and  in  the  end  it  became  necessary 
for  Anthony  Trollope  to  choose  a  definite  career. 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  169 

The  singular  offer  was  made  to  him  of  a  commission 
in  an  Austrian  cavalry  regiment,  and  he  actually  set 
about  the  study  of  the  German  language,  so  that  he 
might  be  qualified  for  this  command ;  but  at  the  end 
of  six  weeks  he  had  another  offer  of  a  very  different 
character,  and  immediately  accepted  a  clerkship  in 
the  General  Post  Office,  with  which  branch  of  the 
public  service  he  remained  connected  until  1867 — a 
period  of  more  than  thirty  years. 

During  seven  of  these  years  he  held  the  office  of 
a  junior  clerk,  with  an  income  which  began  at  £90 
a  year  and  slowly  rose  to  £140.  These  seven  years, 
at  first  sight,  seem  almost  a  continuation  of  what  had 
gone  before.  Trollope  was  always  in  debt,  he  was 
almost  always  in  trouble,  his  superiors  disapproved 
of  him,  his  companions  led  him  into  card-playing, 
which  he  could  ill  afford,  and  into  the  drinking  of 
much  whiskey  and  water,  and  the  consumption  of 
much  tobacco.  He  had  trouble  with  money-lenders, 
and  especially  did  he  have  trouble  with  a  certain 
young  woman,  whose  mother  once  appeared  in  the 
midst  of  the  office,  demanding  of  Trollope  in  a  loud 
voice  when  he  was  going  to  marry  her  daughter. 
Nevertheless,  there  was  another  side  to  this  life  of  his 
which  must  not  be  overlooked.  He  made  some  friends 
who  were  not  only  an  inspiration  to  him,  but  who  in 
their  own  homes  gave  him  a  saving  glimpse  of  what 
was  good  and  wholesome.  Partly  tlirough  their  in- 
fluence and  partly  from  that  gradual  development  of 


170    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

taste  which  comes  slowly  to  men  like  Trollope,  he 
began  to  read;  and  even  in  those  days  it  occurred 
to  him  that  he  might  at  some  time  write  a  novel. 
Though  he  studied  little  in  a  systematic  way,  he 
tauglit  himself  to  translate  both  French  and  Latin ; 
he  came  to  know  Horace  from  beginning  to  end ;  and 
he  eagerly  absorbed  whatever  was  finest  in  English 
poetry.  His  imagination  had  now  begun  to  stir 
within  him,  and  the  form  in  which  it  was  first  mani- 
fested is  described  by  him  in  an  interesting  passage : 

Study  was  not  my  bent,  and  I  could  not  please  myself 
by  being  all  idle.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  I  was  always 
going  about  with  some  castle  in  the  air  firmly  built  within 
my  mind.  For  weeks,  for  months,  if  I  remember  rightly, 
from  year  to  year,  I  would  carry  on  the  same  tale,  binding 
myself  down  to  certain  laws,  to  certain  proportions,  and 
proprieties,  and  unities.  Nothing  impossible  was  ever  intro- 
duced— nor  even  anything  which  from  outward  circumstances 
would  seem  to  be  violently  improbable.  I  myself  was,  of 
course,  my  own  hero.  Such  is  a  necessity  of  castle-building. 
But  I  never  became  a  king  or  a  duke.  I  never  was  a  learned 
man,  nor  even  a  philosopher.  But  I  was  a  very  clever  per- 
son, and  beautiful.  Young  women  used  to  be  fond  of  me. 
.  .  .  There  can,  I  imagine,  hardly  be  a  more  dangerous 
mental  practice;  but  I  have  often  doubted  whether,  had  it 
not  been  my  practice,  I  should  ever  have  written  a  novel,  i 
learned  in  this  way  to  maintain  an  interest  in  a  fictitious 
story,  to  dwell  on  a  work  created  by  my  own  imagination, 
and  to  live  in  a  world  altogether  outside  the  world  of  my 
own  material  life.  In  after  years  I  have  done  the  same, — 
with  this  difference,  that  I  have  discarded  the  hero  of  my 
early  dreams,  and  have  been  able  to  lay  my  own  identity 
aside. 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  171 

These  years  then,  in  spite  of  all  their  shabbiness 
and  their  Bohemianism,  were  in  reahty  the  years 
in  which  the  foundations  of  the  future  novelist  were 
laid.  He  had  come  to  know  at  least  one  side  of  life; 
he  was  learning  from  the  great  masters  of  literary 
style;  he  had  begun,  without  kno^ving  it,  the  study 
of  his  technique;  and,  in  a  way,  he  had  begun  also 
to  garner  the  rich  material  out  of  which  he  was  after- 
ward destined  to  construct  so  much  that  is  solid  and 
enduring.  Even  to  his  squalid  experiences,  to  his 
dreary  life  in  lodgings,  to  his  squabbles  with  his 
superiors,  and  to  the  trouble  with  the  young  woman 
already  mentioned,  his  readers  have  good  cause  for 
gratitude,  since  upon  these  things  are  based  some  of 
the  most  interesting  episodes  in  the  story  of  young 
Eames,  as  told  in  The  Small  House  at  Allington. 

In  ISll,  came  a  gleam  of  the  success  which  had 
hitherto  appeared  to  be  quite  unattainable.  In  that 
year,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  Trollope  accepted  a 
surveyorship  in  connection  with  the  Post-Office  De- 
partment in  Ireland,  which  at  once  removed  him  from 
the  scene  of  all  his  past  unhappiness  and  adversity, 
and  gave  him  a  position  of  comparative  independence, 
with  an  income,  during  the  very  first  year,  of  £400. 
"  This,"  he  says,  "  was  the  first  good  fortune  of  my 
h'fe."  From  that  time  on,  he  rose  steadily  in  the 
postal  service ;  and  whereas  his  character  in  London 
had  been  officially  regarded  as  extremely  bad,  after 
the  day  of  his  transfer  lo  Ireland  he  never  heard 


172    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

one  word  of  censure,  and  he  spccdil}^  acquired  the 
reputation  of  a  most  efficient  pubhc  servant.  It  was 
in  Ireland  that  Trollope  acquired  the  passion  for 
hunting,  which  had  a  most  important  influence  on 
his  literary  work;  and  it  was  in  Ireland  also  that  he 
married.  Finally,  it  was  in  Ireland  that  he  wrote 
his  first  novel,  The  MacDermots  of  Ballycloran,  which 
was  begun  in  1843  and  finished  in  1845,  but  was  not 
published  until  1847.  It  was  an  utter  failure,  al- 
though Trollope  himself  in  after  life  declared  that  he 
had  never  made  another  plot  so  good.  The  book  was 
never  noticed  in  the  reviews ;  the  author  never  got 
an  accounting  from  his  publisher;  and  to  that  pub- 
lisher he  never  wrote  a  single  letter  with  regard  to 
it.  Undismayed,  however,  he  tried  a  second  story — 
again  an  Irish  one — and  again  he  failed ;  for  of  The 
Kellys  and  the  O'Kellys  only  one  hundred  and  forty 
copies  were  sold,  and  the  publisher  incurred  a  loss  of 
something  like  £60.  He  now  tried  an  historical  novel, 
La  Vendee;  and  it  was,  perhaps,  the  most  utter 
failure  of  them  all.  By  this  time  even  Trollope  him- 
self, although  still  sanguine  as  to  the  merits  of  what 
he  had  written,  began  to  disbelieve  in  the  possibility 
of  success.  After  experimenting  with  a  comedy 
which  was  at  once  condemned  by  a  critic  to  whom  he 
had  submitted  it,  and  after  vainly  offering  to  prepare 
for  a  London  publisher  a  handbook  of  travel  for 
Ireland,  he  turned  to  his  official  duties,  and  for  sev- 
eral years  put  forth  no  book. 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  173 

These  years  may  well  have  seemed  to  be  just  so 
much  valuable  time  deducted  from  the  novellst'is' 
literary  life.  Yet  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that 
to  them  and  to  the  experiences  which  they  gave  him, 
Trollope  owed  a  lasting  obligation.  Transferred 
from  Ireland  to  England,  he  was  assigned  to  the 
special  service  of  devising  an  improved  plan  for  the 
delivery  of  letters  in  the  rural  parts  of  England.  In 
the  discharge  of  this  duty  It  became  necessary  for 
him  to  visit  personally  almost  every  nook  and  corner 
of  Devonshire,  Cornwall,  Somersetshire,  Dorsetshire, 
Oxfordshire,  Wiltshire,  Gloucestershire,  Worcester- 
shire, Hertfordshire,  ]\Ionmouthshire,  and  six  of  the 
Welsh  counties,  besides  the  Channel  Islands. 

For  two  years  he  almost  lived  on  horseback,  going 
back  and  forth  continually  through  this  tract  of 
country,  which  contains  some  of  the  most  beautiful 
and  romantic  scenery  of  Britain.  He  came  to  know 
it  by  heart — the  towns  and  villages,  the  manors  and 
the  granges,  even  the  woods  and  copses,  the  lanes 
and  bypaths.  And  what  was  infinitely  more  impor- 
tant, he  came  to  know  the  people;  for  the  nature  of 
liis  mission  l)rought  him  into  personal  contact  with 
men  and  women  of  every  type  and  class.  He  entered 
the  hovel  of  the  peasant  and  the  mansion  of  the  noble- 
man, the  tradesman's  shop,  the  tap-room  of  the  vil- 
lage- inn,  tlic  lonely  farmhouse,  the  pretentious  villa, 
the  country  parsonage,  and  the  bishop's  palace.  He 
chatted   with  the  yokels,  he  made  friends   with  the 


17i    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

sturdy,  shrewd,  hard-headed  yeomen  and  their  buxom 
wives,  he  visited  and  rode  to  hounds  with  the  country 
gentlemen.  He  was,  to  be  sure,  the  government 
official,  but  he  was  also  the  keenly  analytical  observer 
of  human  nature.  He  loved  to  study  men  and  women, 
to  learn  their  ways  of  thinking,  to  understand  their 
interests  and  their  prejudices,  to  fathom  their 
motives,  to  watch  the  play  of  their  activities ;  and  so 
the  two  years  of  this  close  contact  with  the  most 
English  part  of  England  were  not  two  years  of 
wasted  opportunity  or  of  neglected  effort,  but  rather 
they  were  two  years  of  the  very  richest  gain ;  for  he 
was  all  the  while  unconsciously  absorbing  a  minute 
and  sympathetic  knowledge  of  his  countrymen  and 
acquiring  that  insight  into  their  character  which 
was  to  make  him  the  most  profoundly  national  of 
England's  novelists. 

One  midsummer  evening,  in  the  Close  at  Salisbury, 
as  he  stood  watching  the  mellow  moonlight  shimmer 
on  the  spire  of  the  great  cathedral,  there  came  to  him 
the  first  conception  of  a  novel  that  should  depict  the 
life  of  a  cathedral  city,  with  all  the  varied  interests 
and  intrigues  that  gather  about  the  society  of  such 
a  place.  The  general  plan  of  such  a  novel  having 
once  possessed  his  thoughts,  the  individual  details 
soon  worked  themselves  out  swiftly  and  harmoniously. 
The  characters  began  to  grow  into  life;  the  scenes 
and  incidents  began  to  stand  out  vividly  before  his 
mental  vision;  and  at  last,  in  July,  1853,  he  sat  down 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  175 

with  a  full  mind  to  begin  the  composition  of  The 
Warden — the  first  of  those  remarkable  novels  which, 
in  the  minds  of  all  who  are  familiar  with  her  fiction, 
have  given  to  England  a  new  county,  Barsctshire, 
and  have  created  for  us  a  whole  group  of  men  and 
women  who  are  as  real  as  any  of  the  men  and  women 
whom  we  meet  and  know  in  actual  life.  The  Warden 
appeared  in  1855,  and  for  the  first  time  Trollopc  was 
made  to  feel  that  as  a  writer  he  had  within  him  the 
elements  which  go  to  make  success.  The  Warden,  to 
be  sure,  caused  no  great  stir  at  the  time  of  its  appear- 
ance; but  its  author  knew  that  at  least  it  had  not 
failed.  The  critics  noticed  it;  and  Trollope  could 
discover  that  those  about  him  were  aware  that  he  had 
written  a  book.  From  a  commercial  point  of  view 
the  result  might  have  seemed  almost  as  discouraging 
as  was  the  case  with  his  early  failures. 

By  the  end  of  1857,  exactly  ten  years  from  the 
time  when  he  published  his  first  book,  he  had  received 
altogether  from  his  novels  the  paltry  sum  of  £55.  As 
lie  says  himself,  he  could  have  done  vastly  better  had 
he  spent  the  time  in  breaking  stone.  lie  had,  how- 
ever, received  sufficient  recognition  of  another  kind 
to  give  hlin  heart ;  so  that  he  took  up  the  writing  of 
Jiarchestcr  Towers  in  an  optimistic  spirit,  such  as 
before  had  never  animated  lilm.  The  writing  of  it, 
as  he  tells  us,  was  a  source  of  great  delight  to  him; 
and  his  pen  moved  swiftly  over  tlie  })ag('s  of  that 
novel,    upon    which,    perhaps,    more    than    up(;n    any 


17G    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

other  single  book,  his  fame  must  rest.  It  carried  on 
the  story  of  The  Warden,  but  with  a  broader  scope, 
a  firmer  grasp,  a  finer  fancy,  and  a  most  remarkable 
fertility  in  the  drawing  of  characters ;  while  the 
discursiveness  that  is  the  bane  of  several  of  his  later 
novels  is  almost  wholly  absent  from  this  fascinating 
book.  Barchester  Towers  at  once  made  Trollope 
generally  known ;  and  from  this  time  a  definite  posi- 
tion in  the  world  of  letters  was  assured  to  him.  He 
was  no  longer  simply  an  official  of  the  General  Post- 
Office ;  he  was  Anthony  Trollope,  a  man  whose  name 
stood  for  something  definite  and  admirable.  A  little 
while  before,  promotion  in  the  postal  service  had 
more  than  doubled  his  official  income ;  so  that  now  at 
last  he  was  in  a  position  of  ease,  lifted  above  the 
minor  worries  of  practical  life,  and  with  the  path  to 
a  successful  literary  career  made  smooth  before  him. 
Then  came  a  period  not  only  of  success,  but  a 
period  also  in  which  he  was  destined  to  round  out 
and  complete  the  cycle  of  experience  that  was  to  fit 
him  not  merely  for  describing  localities  and  partial 
phases  of  existence,  but  for  the  understanding  and 
the  analysis  of  life  and  of  society  as  a  whole.  Hith- 
erto he  had  known  Great  Britain  only ;  but  now  he 
could  indulge  a  taste  for  foreign  travel.  He  visited 
the  Continent  as  a  tourist,  and  in  1858  the  govern- 
ment sent  him  to  Egypt  to  make  a  postal  treaty  with 
the  Pasha.  Somewhat  later  a  similar  errand  took 
him  to  the  United  States,  to  Cuba,  and  to  Central 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  177 

America,  and  he  afterward  visited  Australia  and 
South  Africa,  and  made  a  voyage  to  Iceland.  Be- 
sides the  broadening  effects  of  foreign  travel,  he  was 
to  make  acquaintances  and  to  form  lasting  friend- 
ships, whose  inspiration  was  of  a  value  quite  ines- 
timable. Changing  his  home  to  London,  which  he 
had  left  years  before  as  a  debt-ridden  junior 
clerk  in  the  post-office,  regarded  alike  by  him- 
self and  by  others  as  something  of  a  pariah,  he  now 
received  a  cordial  welcome  to  that  inner  sanctuary 
of  London  life  in  which  is  to  be  found  all  that  is 
best  of  English  intellect  and  English  bonhomie^ 
where  statesmen  and  scholars  and  artists  and  men  of 
letters  meet  with  utter  unreserve  to  give  to  one 
another  the  very  choicest  vintage  of  their  genius. 
Among  the  friends  that  Trollopc  made  were  such 
political  luminaries  as  the  Earl  of  Derby,  Lord 
Hipon,  Lord  Kimberly,  Sir  William  Vernon-Harcourt 
and  George  Bcntinck ;  the  world  of  letters  was  splen- 
didly represented  by  Thackeray  and  Dickens,  by 
George  Eliot,  Charles  Readc,  Lord  Lytton,  George 
Henry  Lewes,  Charlotte  Bronte,  Wilkie  Collins,  Tom 
'i'aylor,  Tom  Hughes,  and  Lord  Houghton;  while 
statesmanship  and  literature  were  both  combined  in 
the  enigmatically  fascinating  person  of  Disraeli,  A 
more  brilliant  set  of  associates  had  not  been  gathered 
together  since  the  days  of  Elizabeth  ;  and  among  thorn 
Trollopc  moved  as  one  who  by  his  own  unaided  genius 
had  made  lilmself  their  equal. 


178    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Precisely,  then,  as  Trollope's  two  years  on  horse- 
back amid  the  English  rural  countries  had  yielded 
an  extraordinary  knowledge  of  that  English  life 
which  is  racy  of  the  soil,  so  his  years  in  London 
gave  him  no  less  an  understanding  of  the  tone,  the 
ways,  and  the  modes  of  thought  that  characterise 
the  governing  class  of  Englishmen — the  class  also 
that  establishes  the  intellectual  standards  of  the 
English  race.  Foreign  travel,  too,  was  for  him  a 
salutary  antidote  to  the  narrowness  that  sometimes 
afflicts  the  British  mind.  It  is  not,  therefore,  to  be 
wondered  at  if  in  the  splendid  series  of  novels  which 
Trollope  now  composed,  he  drew  a  broad  and  com- 
prehensive and  minutely  accurate  picture  of  England 
as  it  is  and  of  English  men  and  English  women  as 
they  are.  He  trusted  nothing  to  imagination  pure 
and  simple,  nor  was  he  willing  even  to  evolve  his 
facts  and  scenes  from  out  his  inner  consciousness. 
Had  he  not  stood  for  Parliament  himself,  he  Avould 
never  have  given  us  those  extraordinarily  vivid  im- 
pressions which  are  to  be  found  in  such  of  his  novels 
as  have  to  do  with  the  strife  of  parties.  Had  he  not, 
week  after  week,  sat  in  the  gallery  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  listening  patiently  to  the  debates  and 
noting  all  the  special  usages  and  customs  of  that 
interesting  place,  he  would  never  have  planned  and 
carried  out  the  brilliant  scries  of  novels  which  relate 
to  parliamentary  life,  and  of  which  Phineas  Finn 
was  the  precursor.     He  wrote  only  of  what  he  ac- 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  179 

tually  knew ;  and  when  he  wrote  he  wrote  with  a  per- 
fect knowledge  and  a  wonderful  power  of  making  it 
intensely  real ;  for  he  himself  in  his  own  person  had 
seen  and  felt  and  understood  it  all. 

The  latter  years  of  Trollope's  life  were  not  event- 
ful save  for  their  literary  performance  and  the 
measure  of  success  which  it  received.  Before  his 
death  in  1882  he  had  written  and  published  forty-six 
novels,  besides  having  in  manuscript  one  completed 
novel  (An  Old  Man's  Love)  and  one  unfinished  novel 
(The  Land  Leaguers).  He  had  likewise  published 
four  books  of  travel,  five  volumes  of  stories,  and  four 
biographical  works.  After  his  death  appeared  his 
Autobiography^  a  singularly  frank  and  interesting 
revelation  of  his  personal  experiences  and  of  his  per- 
sonal opinions  and  theories  regarding  his  own  literary 
work.  The  narrative  ends  with  the  year  1879,  and 
it  is  supplemented  by  a  few  pages  from  the  pen  of 
his  son  Henry,  who  edited  the  book. 

Having  so  far  considered  the  main  features  of  his 
life  and  of  his  environment,  it  remains  for  us  to 
estimate  the  character  and  the  value  of  his  achieve- 
ments as  a  writer,  and  to  hazard  also  some  observa- 
tions as  to  the  place  in  English  literature  which 
is  likely  to  be  assigned  him  by  the  judgment  of  pos- 
terity. 

In  the  decade  which  succeeded  Trollope's  death 
there  is  no  doubt  that  his  reputation  as  a  novelist 
almost  immediately   waned.      From   the   time  of   the 


ISO    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

production  of  Barchester  Towers  down  to  the  year 
in  which  he  died  he  had  remained  steadily  a  favourite 
writer  with  a  very  large  and  discriminating  public. 
No  single  novel  that  he  wrote  ever  produced  what  is 
popularly  called  "  a  literary  sensation."  That  was 
not  the  day  when  novels  by  writers  known  or  unknown 
leaped  at  once  to  the  sales  that  require  six  figures 
for  their  computation,  any  more  than  it  was  the 
day  when  novels  were  produced  to  be  read  by  every 
one  in  the  course  of  a  few  short  months,  and  then 
to  be  forgotten  absolutely.  Yet  if  Trollope's  suc- 
cess had  not  been  spectacular,  nevertheless  it  had 
been  substantial.  A  new  novel  from  his  pen  was 
always  looked  for  with  keen  interest,  and  its  appear- 
ance was  always  an  event.  Why,  then,  almost  imme- 
diately after  his  death  did  this  interest  decline,  and 
why  until  within  the  last  few  years  have  his  books 
appeared  to  be  gradually  passing  into  a  species  of 
oblivion.?  If  these  books  have  within  them,  as  they 
most  surely  have,  all  the  essential  qualities  that  give 
vitality  to  fiction,  why  should  they  have  suffered  a 
decline  in  the  estimation  of  the  reading  public  .f* 
There  are,  I  think,  two  explanations  to  be  given  of 
this  phenomenon,  and  both  these  explanations  are 
quite  consistent  with  a  belief  that  Trollope's  obscur- 
ation is  but  a  passing  phase,  and  that  even  now  he 
is  beginning  to  take  high  rank  and  an  enduring  place 
among  the  very  greatest  masters  of  modern  fiction. 
First  of  all,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  publication 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  181 

of  his  Aidoh'iography  did  him  serious  harm,  not  only 
with  the  critics,  but  with  his  own  admirers — with  all, 
indeed,  who  entertain  and  who  love  to  entertain  what 
may  be  termed  the  inspirational  theory  of  literary 
creation.  In  the  fancy  of  these  persons  an  author 
still  retains  something  of  the  traditional  sanctity 
which  clung  to  him  in  the  days  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
when,  garlanded  with  bays,  he  was  supposed  to  write 
under  the  guidance  of  the  Muses  whom  he  invoked, 
and  who  were  thought  to  touch  his  lips  with  the  fire 
of  inspiration.  Trollope,  however,  roughly  and 
almost  brutally  rejected  the  notion  that  a  producer 
of  literature  is  anything  more  than  any  other  kind 
of  a  producer.  His  chief  motive  for  writing  is  to 
be  found,  not  in  the  love  of  fame  or  in  the  worship 
of  art  for  its  own  sake,  but  in  the  desirabihty  of 
money.     Read  his  own  words  upon  this  subject: 

I  nm  well  nware  that  there  are  many  who  think  that  an 
author  in  his  authorship  should  not  regard  money — nor  a 
painter,  or  sculptor,  or  composer  in  his  art.  I  do  not  know 
tiiat  this  unnatural  self-sacrifice  is  supposed  to  extend  itself 
further.  A  barrister,  a  clergj'man,  a  doctor,  an  engineer, 
and  even  actors  and  architects,  may  without  disgrace  follow 
the  bent  of  human  nature  and  endeavour  to  fill  their  bellies 
and  clothe  their  backs  and  also  those  of  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren as  comfortably  as  they  can  by  the  exercise  of  their 
abilities  and  their  crafts.  They  may  be  rationally  realistic 
as  may  the  liutchers  and  the  bakers;  but  the  artist  and  the 
author  forget  the  high  glories  of  their  calling  if  they  con- 
descend to  make  a  money-return  a  first  object.  They  who 
jireach   this   doctrine  will   be   much   offended   by   my   theory; 


182    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

and  by  this  book  of  mine,  if  my  theory  and  my  book  come 
beneath  tlicir  notice. 


The  last  sentence  has,  I  think,  been  justified  by  the 
event.  His  book  did  come  beneath  the  notice  of  many 
who  preached  tlie  altruistic  doctrine  of  literary  pro- 
duction, and  they  were,  indeed,  offended  both  by  his 
theory  and  by  his  book.  Again,  as  a  sort  of  corol- 
lary to  his  original  proposition,  the  account  that  he 
has  given  of  his  own  methods  of  writing,  undoubtedly 
did  much  to  discredit  him  with  the  critics.  As,  in 
the  passage  just  quoted,  he  compared  the  work  of 
the  author  and  the  artist  with  the  work  of  the 
butcher  and  the  baker,  so  was  he  fond — undoubtedly 
too  fond — of  saying  that  the  methods  of  the  author 
need  not  differ  in  kind  from  the  methods  of  the 
tradesman  or  the  artisan.  The  following  passage  is 
extremely  characteristic : 

I  had  long  since  convinced  myself  that  in  such  works  as 
mine  the  great  secret  consisted  in  acknowledging  myself  to 
be  bound  to  rules  of  labour  similar  to  those  which  an  artisan 
or  a  mechanic  is  forced  to  obey,  A  shoemaker  when  he  has 
finished  one  pair  of  shoes  does  not  sit  down  and  contem^ 
plate  his  work  in  idle  satisfaction.  "  There  is  my  pair  of 
shoes  finished  at  last!  What  a  pair  of  shoes  it  is!"  The 
shoemaker  who  so  indulged  himself  would  be  without  wages 
half  his  time.  It  is  the  same  with  a  professional  writer  of 
books.  An  author  may,  of  course,  want  time  to  study  a  new 
subject.  He  will,  at  any  rate,  assure  himself  that  there  is 
some  such  good  reason  why  he  should  pause.  He  does  pause, 
and  will  be  idle  for  a  month  or  two  while  he  tells  himself 
how  beautiful  is  that  last  pair  of  shoes  which  he  has  finished! 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  183 

Having  thought  much  of  all  this,  and  having  made  up  my 
mind  that  I  could  be  really  happy  only  when  I  was  at  work, 
I  had  now  quite  accustomed  myself  to  begin  a  second  pair  as 
soon  as  the  first  was  out  of  my  hands. 

And,  again,  occurs  a  curious  passage,  written 
down  soon  after  he  had  been  requested  by  the  Lon- 
don Graphic  to  write  for  it  a  Christmas  story: 

I  feel  with  regard  to  literature  somewhat  as  I  suppose 
an  upholsterer  and  undertaker  feels  when  he  is  called  upon 
to  supply  a  funeral.  He  has  to  supply  it,  however  distaste- 
ful it  may  be.  It  is  his  business,  and  he  will  starve  if  he 
neglect  it.  So  have  I  felt  that  when  anything  in  the  shape 
of  a  novel  was  required,  I  was  bound  to  produce  it.  Nothing 
can  be  more  distasteful  to  me  than  to  have  to  give  a  relish 
of  Christmas  to  what  I  write.  I  feel  the  humbug  implied  by 
the  nature  of  the  order.  .  .  .  Alas!  at  this  very  moment, 
I  have  one  to  write,  which  I  have  promised  to  supply  within 
three  weeks  of  this  time — the  picture-makers  always  require 
a  long  interval — as  to  which  I  have  in  vain  been  cudgelling 
my  brain  for  the  last  month.  I  can't  send  away  the  order 
to  another  shop,  but  I  do  not  know  I  shall  ever  get  the  coffin 
made. 

If  this  was  Trollope's  theory,  he  certainly  carried 
it  out  in  actual  practice.  He  was  an  official  of  the 
post-office  as  well  as  a  novelist,  and  in  consequence 
he  could  not  always  pick  and  choose  the  times  and 
places  for  his  literary  labour.  The  inspirational 
theory,  therefore,  was  impossible  to  him ;  for  the 
moments  of  his  inspiration  would  frequently  be  sure 
to  clash  with  the  moments  of  his  opportunity.  Hence 
quite  early    in    his  literary  career  he  resolved  that 


ISl    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

every  day  he  would  devote  three  hours  to  composition, 
and  that  these  three  hours  sliould  be  taken  whenever 
they  could  be,  and  from  whatever  time  was  at  his  dis- 
posal, no  matter  where  he  chanced  to  be.  This  rule 
he  never  broke.  If  he  were  at  home,  he  sat  before 
his  desk  and  wrote.  If  he  were  on  a  railway  journey, 
he  carried  with  him  a  writing-pad,  and  in  the  rail- 
way carriage  pursued  his  task,  regardless  of  his 
surroundings  until  his  daily  stint  had  been 
completed.  If  he  were  making  a  sea  voyage,  he  had 
a  little  table  screwed  to  the  side  of  his  stateroom; 
and  upon  it,  even  in  the  stormiest  of  weather,  when 
the  ship  was  pitching  and  rocking,  and  when  he 
himself  was  suffering  from  the  direst  qualms  of 
seasickness,  he  wrote  each  day  until  he  had  produced 
three  thousand  words — for  he  exacted  of  himself 
at  least  two  hundred  and  fifty  words  each  quarter 
of  an  hour — and  with  his  watch  before  him  he  would 
labour  with  all  the  exactness  and  precision  of  an 
accountant. 

Now,  all  these  things — ^his  liking  for  money,  his 
bourgeois  views  about  the  literary  profession,  and 
the  stolidly  methodical  way  in  which,  apparently, 
he  did  his  work — seemed  very  shocking  to  very  many 
persons.  The  critics  all  cried  out  in  reprobation, 
and  thousands  of  those  who  had  read  his  books  with 
intense  delight  grew  speedily  ashamed  of  their  en- 
thusiasm when  they  learned  just  how  these  books 
had  been   composed.      They   experienced   a   sort   of 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  185 

disillusionment.  They  suddenly  perceived  all  sorts 
of  defects  of  which  before  they  had  been  utterly 
unconscious.  It  became  the  fashion  to  speak  of 
Trollope  as  a  mechanical  and  uninspired  writer,  and, 
being  mechanical  and  uninspired,  as  one  whose  writ- 
ing must  of  necessity  be  dull.  In  course  of  time  this 
judgment  passed  into  an  accepted  formula,  and  I 
have  often  heard  it  repeated  by  intelligent  men  and 
women  who,  upon  being  questioned,  were  forced  re- 
luctantly to  admit  that  they  had  never  read  a  single 
line  of  Trollope  in  their  lives.  They  were  simply 
parroting  the  dicta  of  Mr.  Henry  James  and  other 
critics  of  the  Transcendental  School.  They  did  not 
see,  and  the  critics  did  not  see,  that  it  makes  no  dif- 
ference how  or  when  or  by  whom  or  with  what 
theory  a  book  is  written ;  since  it  can  be  rightly 
judged  only  by  what  it  holds  within  itself.  If  it  be 
good,  if  it  be  true  to  life,  if  It  can  make  you  laugh 
with  its  humour  and  thrill  with  its  passion,  if  it  can 
make  your  heart  beat  faster  by  its  power,  and  your 
lip  quiver  and  your  eyes  grow  dim  by  its  pathos — 
why  should  you  listen  to  the  arid  little  judgments  of 
some  paltry  critic,  equipped  with  a  yardstick  and  a 
set  of  rules  rather  than  with  a  heart  to  feel  and  a 
l)rain  to  understand?  There  are  those  who  can  see 
none  of  the  splendour  of  Byron's  poetry  because 
Byron  was  himself  a  mocker  and  a  rake.  There  arc 
some  who  will  not  take  the  trouble  to  become  familiar 
with  the  exquisite  beauty  of  Newman's  prose,  because 


186    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

they  think  of  him  as  a  recreant  to  the  faith  in  which 
he  had  been  born.  Philistines  such  as  these  may 
scoff  at  Trollope  and  may  say  that  he  was  uninspired 
and  mechanical  because  he  wrote  three  hours  a  day 
with  his  watch  before  him ;  but  no  man  who  reads 
his  books  and  feels  their  magic  and  their  elemental 
vigour  and  virility  can  deny  that  Anthony  Trollope 
was,  in  his  own  sphere,  just  as  great  as  Thackeray, 
and  (with  certain  definite  limitations)  almost  the 
peer  of  Balzac. 

It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to  defend  him  only 
in  this  way.  The  impartial  critic  should  recall  not 
merely  all  those  passages  where  Trollope  has  flouted 
at  "  inspiration  "  in  its  hackneyed  sense,  and  where 
he  has  half -defiantly  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  with  a 
conscious  exaggeration,  crammed  down  the  critic's 
throat  a  bluntly  phrased  repudiation  of  pure  art. 
There  is  another  side  to  this ;  for  there  is  something 
else  that  Trollope  tells  us  which  should  modify  the 
judgment  of  even  the  most  captious  and  fastidious. 
A  few  sentences  that  he  has  himself  written  about 
Thackeray  will  give  a  clue  to  what  I  have  in  mind: 

Late  in  Thackeray's  life — he  never  was  an  old  man,  but 
toward  the  end  of  his  career — he  failed  in  his  power  of  charm- 
ing, because  he  allowed  his  mind  to  become  idle.  In  the 
plots  which  he  conceived,  and  in  the  language  which  he 
used,  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  any  perceptible  change; 
but  in  The  Virf/inians  and  in  Philip  the  reader  is  intro- 
duced to  no  character  with  which  he  makes  a  close  and 
undying  acquaintance.     And  this,  I  have  no  doubt,  is  so  be- 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  187 

cause  Thackeray  himself  had  no  such  intimacy.  His  mind 
had  come  to  be  weary  of  that  fictitious  life  which  is  always 
demanding  the  labour  of  new  creation;  and  he  troubled  him- 
self with  his  two  Virginians  and  liis  Pliilip  only  when  he 
was  seated  at  his  desk. 

This  criticism  by  him  of  a  brother  author  throws 
a  flood  of  hght  on  what  has  been  so  carelessly  de- 
scribed as  Trollope's  mechanical  process  of  compo- 
sition. Did  Trollope  trouble  himself  with  his 
creations  only  when  he  was  seated  at  his  desk?  If 
so,  then  it  may  be  that  he  deserves  the  reproach  of 
being  a  mere  literary  artisan.  Nothing,  however, 
could  be  more  untrue.  His  hours  of  real  composi- 
tion were  not  the  hours  when  he  was  writing,  but 
when  he  was  alone,  untroubled  by  society,  free  from 
all  other  cares  and  other  duties  and  able  to  pass 
from  the  world  of  fact  which  lay  about  him,  to  that 
other  no  less  actual  world  which  he  himself  created. 
It  was  then  that  he  wrought  out  his  plots,  and  called 
into  existence  the  men  and  women  whom  the  world 
has  learned  to  know,  and  when  (though  he  himself 
rejected  the  idea)  true  inspiration  came  to  him.  I 
have  quoted  the  words  for  which  his  critics  have  con- 
demned him.  Let  me  now  quote  the  words  which 
make  that  condemnation  utterly  unjust: 

At  such  times  I  have  been  able  to  imbue  myself  thor- 
oughly with  the  characters  I  have  had  in  liand.  I  liave  wan- 
dered alone  among  the  rocks  and  woods,  crying  at  their 
grief,  laiigliing  ut  their  absurdities,  and  thorougiily  enjoying 


ISS    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

tlioir  joy.  T  have  been  impregnated  with  my  own  creations 
till  it  has  been  my  only  excitement  to  sit  with  the  pen  in  my 
h.uul,  aiul  drive  my  team  before  me  at  as  quick  a  pace  as  I 
could  make  them  travel." 

Are  tlicse  the  words  and  is  this  the  feeling  of  a 
literary  artisan?  Could  the  most  brilliant  writer 
whom  the  world  has  ever  known  bring  to  our  minds 
more  vividly  the  creative  spirit,  the  throbbing  brain, 
and  the  living  soul  of  the  inspired  artist.?  And,  as 
a  last  quotation,  let  me  cite  these  sentences  which 
Trollope  wrote  down  very  soberly  in  summing  up 
his  thoroughly  matured  opinions  of  his  own  pro- 
fession : 

The  novelist  has  other  aims  than  the  elucidation  of  his 
plot.  He  desires  to  make  his  readers  so  intimately  acquainted 
with  his  characters,  that  the  creatures  of  his  brain  should 
be  to  them  speaking,  moving,  living,  human  creatures.  This 
he  can  never  do  iniless  he  know  those  fictitious  personages 
himself;  and  he  can  never  know  them  unless  he  can  live 
with  them  in  the  full  reality  of  established  intimacy.  They 
must  be  with  him  as  he  lies  down  to  sleep  and  as  he  wakens 
from  his  dreams.  He  must  learn  to  hate  them  and  to  love 
them.  He  must  argue  with  them,  forgive  them,  and  even 
submit  to  them.  He  must  know  of  them  whether  they  be 
cold-blooded  or  passionate,  whether  true  or  false,  and  how 
far  true,  and  how  far  false.  The  depth  and  the  breadth,  and 
the  narrowness  and  the  shallowness  of  each  should  be  clear 
to  him. 

It  is  so  that  I  lived  with  my  characters,  and  thence  has 
come  whatever  success  I  have  obtained.  There  is  a  gallery 
of  them,  and  of  all  in  that  gallery  I  may  say  that  I  know 
the  tone  of  the  voice,  and  the  colour  of  the  hair,  every  flame 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  189 

of  the  eye,  and  the  very  clothes  they  wear.  Of  each  man 
I  could  assert  whether  he  would  have  said  these  or  the 
other  words;  of  every  woman,  whether  she  would  thus  have 
smiled  or  so  have  frowned. 


These  passages  and  others  like  them  make  it  clear 
enough  that  Trollope's  three  hours  a  day  of  writing 
and  the  imposition  upon  himself  of  a  stated  task 
are  to  be  viewed  quite  differently  from  the  way  in 
which  the  critics  view  them.  These  three  hours  were 
not  hours  of  composition  in  the  real  sense  of  the 
word.  When  he  came  to  his  desk  he  did  not  come  to 
it  with  an  empty  mind  and  with  a  feeling  of  uncer- 
tainty as  to  what  he  was  about  to  do.  He  came  to 
it  with  the  work  of  composition  and  creation  already 
quite  accomplished,  with  everything  thought  out, 
and  with  a  mind,  as  he  himself  described  it,  impreg- 
nated with  his  own  creations ;  so  that  all  he  had  to 
do  was  to  take  his  pen  in  hand  and  transcribe  with 
the  utmost  rapidity  the  scenes,  the  incidents,  the 
dialogue,  and  the  reflections  with  which  his  active 
brain  was  teeming.  His  three  hours  of  daily  work, 
then,  were  hours  of  clerical  work  alone.  The  real 
labour  had  been  already  done. 

Therefore,  it  is  unfair  and  almost  dishonest  to 
take  a  part  of  what  he  has  revealed  to  us  regarding 
his  own  method,  and  to  ignore  the  other  part  which 
is  necessary  to  a  perfect  understanding  of  it  all. 
Trollopc  was  not  uninspired.  lie  was  not  mechani- 
cal.    His  novels  were  not  turned  out  as  a  cobbler 


190    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

turns  out  shoes,  nor  as  an  undertaker  turns  out  cof- 
fins. But  they  were  called  into  being  as  every  great 
artistic  creation  is  called  into  being,  with  pain  and 
travail  and  joy  and  exultation,  by  a  mind  aroused 
to  put  forth  all  its  powers,  an  imagination  splen- 
didly aflame,  and  a  soul  pierced  through  and 
through  by  poignant  birth-pangs.  And  the  novels 
themselves  show  all  of  this  quite  plainly  to  one  who 
reads  them  with  a  sentient  mind.  If  Trollope,  with 
a  certain  healthy  contempt  for  the  dilettante  and 
the  amateur,  has  sometimes  seemed  to  hold  all 
art  in  slight  esteem,  and  to  blurt  out  bluntly  that 
there  is  no  art,  and  that  he  wrote  his  novels  in  the 
spirit  of  a  man  of  business,  then  there  is  always  at 
hand  the  reply  which  a  critic  once  made  to  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling  in  answer  to  a  brilliant  gibe  of 
his  directed  against  Art.  The  critic  in  question 
took  down  a  volume  of  Mr.  Kipling's  poems  and, 
turning  to  that  wonderful  ballad  "  Mandalay  " — a 
ballad  curiously  blended  of  human  passion  and  ori- 
ental colour  and  haunting  music — he  simply  said, 
"  But,  Mr.  Kipling,  this  is  Art." 

I  have  remarked,  however,  that  for  the  temporary 
decline  of  general  interest  in  Trollopc's  work  there  is 
another  reason,  and  it  is  one  that  has  reference  to 
the  literary  history  of  our  own  times.  It  was  near 
the  date  of  Trollope's  death  that  the  English  read- 
ing world  began  to  feel  the  influence  of  the  so-called 
naturalistic    school    of    French    fiction.     In    1881, 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  191 

after  the  appearance  in  England  of  the  two  novels 
(UAssommoir  and  Nana)  that  are  the  most  famous 
if  not  the  best  of  all  that  he  ever  wrote,  Emile 
Zola  first  became  known  and  was  first  seriously  read 
in  England  and  the  United  States.  The  almost  epic 
power  of  this  man  took  a  strong  hold  upon  every 
class  of  readers,  while  his  grossness  and  brutality, 
though  at  first  they  horrified,  at  length  came  to  pos- 
sess a  morbid  fascination  for  those  to  whom  the 
combination  of  extraordinary  genius  and  unbridled 
license  had  been  hitherto  unknown.  The  more  whole- 
some and  self-restrained  realism  of  native  English 
writers  like  Thackeray  and  Trollope  seemed  for  the 
moment  to  be  pale  and  cold  beside  the  panorama 
unrolled  before  the  eyes  of  Zola,  in  which  all  that 
was  morally  hideous  and  physically  loathsome  was 
exploited  with  the  utmost  frankness,  and  in  which 
every  form  of  vice  stood  out  in  bold  relief  against 
a  background  glaring  with  infernal  fires. 

Then  began  and  then  contmucd  for  a  time  the 
cult  of  the  Unmentionable.  American  and  English 
readers  and  students  of  literature  went  through  a 
strange  experience,  from  which  not  even  yet  do  they 
seem  to  be  recovering.  The  Gallic  influence  was 
paramount.  French  writers,  hitherto  but  little  read 
outside  of  France,  were  hastily  translated.  We  went 
back  to  Stendhal  and  the  Goncourt  brothers.  We 
read  and  re-read  Balzac  and  Flaubert.  We  hailed 
the  rise  of  Maupassant  in  his  cynicism,  of  Mend^s  in 


192    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

his  monstrosity,  and  of  Huysmans  in  his  degener- 
acy. With  a  few,  all  this  was  an  initiation  into  new 
theories  of  fiction.  With  the  many,  it  was  a  baptism 
of  filth.  The  fashion  spread,  and  at  last  in  English 
we  had  rivals  of  the  French — George  Moore  and 
Gissing,  and  {longo  intervallo)  Edgar  Saltus  and 
Flowerdew  and  Frank  Norris — while  English  play- 
wrights arose  to  present  the  same  distorted  views  of 
life  in  a  dramatic  form.  This  naturalistic  movement 
ran  a  rapid  course.  It  was  a  strange  infection, 
a  furious  fever,  and  it  has  left  lasting  traces  upon 
our  intellectual  life ;  but  as  an  infection  and  a  fever 
it  will  pass  away,  and  men  and  women  will  revert 
once  again  to  healthier  tastes  and  saner  literary 
pleasures — to  an  appreciation  of  the  Romantic  and 
a  preference  for  that  truer  realism  which  views  life 
as  a  whole  and  does  not  find  its  normal  phases  in  a 
gutter. 

Of  this  truer  realism  there  have  been  just  three 
great  masters,  and  these  are  Balzac,  Thackeray, 
and  Trollope.  All  three  of  them  are  free  alike  from 
any  taint  of  Naturalism  and  from  the  paltriness  of 
Trivlalism.  By  universal  consent  Balzac  stands  pre- 
eminent among  the  three,  not  because  he  alone  saw 
all  of  life,  but  because  he  alone  both  saw  it  and  had 
the  courage  and  the  power  to  set  It  forth.  The  real 
supremacy  of  Balzac  is  not  to  be  found  in  his  mas- 
tery of  detail,  in  the  completeness  and  perfection  of 
any  single  book  of  his,  or  in  the  unique  fidelity  to  life 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  193 

of  any  single  character  or  single  set  of  characters 
portrayed  for  us.  No  one  of  the  many  novels  which 
are  linked  together  to  form  his  wonderful  Comedie 
Humaine — no  one  of  these,  I  say,  not  even  Eugenie 
Grandet,  or  Pere  Goriot,  can,  taken  by  itself,  be 
favourably  compared  with  Pendenn'is  or  The  New- 
comes  or  even  with  Vanity  Fair.  He  has  drawn  no 
characters  more  absolutely  true  to  life  and  more  en- 
during in  the  minds  of  men  than  Becky  Sharp  and 
Lord  Steyne  and  Major  Pendennis  and  Harry  Foker 
and  Colonel  Newcome. 

Balzac's  supremacy  really  lies  in  the  vastness  and 
fulness  of  his  achievement,  in  the  immensity  of  his 
canvas,  in  his  Titanism.  He  at  times  works  roughly, 
but  he  is  not  cutting  delicate  little  figures  upon  a 
gem ;  he  is  always  hewing  monumental  sculptures 
out  of  a  gigantic  crag.  To  know  him  as  he  is,  we 
must  know  every  line  he  wrote;  for  only  in  his  en- 
tirety can  he  be  really  known  at  all.  His  conspicu- 
ous merit  is  not  that  he  has  given  us  an  accurate 
and  artistic  picture  of  this  or  that  or  the  other  sec- 
tion of  human  life,  but  that  with  an  almost  super- 
human sweep  of  vision  he  has  revealed  to  us  in 
one  immortal  picture  all  of  life  in  its  completeness. 
Thackeray  has  not  done  this.  He  doubtless  saw 
all  life,  but  he  never  drew  it  all.  He  had  not  the 
audacity,  he  had  not  the  energy  and  the  tremen- 
dous vitality,  both  of  body  and  mind,  for  such  a 
task ;  and  he  was  hampered  by  the  conventions  of 


19t    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

niucli  in  liunian  life  from  which  not  even  transcend- 
ent genius  may  draw  aside  the  veil.  Thackeray's 
work,  therefore,  is  the  work  of  one  who  laboured 
under  limitations — limitations  that  were  partly  self- 
imposed — and  the  result  is  a  wonderful  reproduction 
of  his  own  sphere  of  life  and  of  all  that  entered  into 
it,  with  glimpses  also,  though  they  are  only  glimpses, 
of  the  half-world  that  lay  beyond.  His  artistry  is 
perfect;  his  feeling  for  his  subject  is,  perhaps,  even 
more  true  than  that  of  Balzac.  Yet  blot  out  the 
city  of  London  from  the  world  of  his  creation,  and 
how  little  is  there  left !  With  him,  in  his  finer  work, 
all  interest  centres  there. 

When  we  come  to  consider  the  relative  place  of 
Anthony  Trollope  in  the  realistic  triad,  we  must 
bear  in  mind  precisely  the  same  standards  that  have 
been  applied  to  Balzac  and  to  Thackeray.  No  sin- 
gle book  of  Trollope's,  not  even  Barchester  Towers 
or  He  Knew  He  Was  Right,  can  be  favourably  com- 
pared with  any  of  the  three  great  Thacker*ayan 
novels.  Like  Balzac,  Trollope  is  inferior  to  Thack- 
eray in  execution  and  in  mastery  of  detail,  though 
quite  his  equal  in  his  insight  into  character ;  for  Mrs. 
Proudie  and  the  Bishop  of  Barchester  and  Lady 
Glencora  and  Lizzie  Eustace  and  Lily  Dale  and  Mr. 
ChafFanbrass  have  long  since  won  a  place  among  the 
immortals.  But,  like  Balzac,  he  reveals  to  us  a 
larger  world  than  Thackeray's,  and  always  with  a 
perfect  comprehension  of  it.     It  is  a  Briton's  world. 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  195 

as  Balzac's  is  a  Frenchman's ;  but  it  is  not,  as  is 
Thackeray's,  the  world  of  a  mere  Londoner.  Trol- 
lope  gives  us  London  life,  too,  and  much  more  fully 
than  Thackeray  has  done ;  for  he  shows  us  in  a  series 
of  brilliant  novels  the  very  penetralia  of  the  politi- 
cal world  as  Thackeray  never  could  have  done,  be- 
cause he  lacked  the  knowledge.  Trollope  performed 
the  task  with  such  success  as  to  extort  a  wondering 
applause  from  the  men  who  lived  the  life  that  was 
lived  by  the  Mildmays  and  Daubenej's,  the  De  Ter- 
riers and  Monks,  and  all  the  smaller  fry  whose  am- 
bitions and  intrigues  are  inextricably  tangled  with 
the  work  of  government. 

But  Trollope  has  done  more  than  this.  He  has 
given  us  also  rural  England  and  provincial  England 
— an  England  with  which  London  has  no  close  asso- 
ciation. Thackeray  never  created  for  us  a  cathedral 
city  like  Barchester,  much  less  an  entire  county  like 
Barsetshire.  We  can  not  go  with  him  among  the 
yeomanry,  among  the  boors,  among  the  country  gen- 
tlemen, among  the  small  tradesmen,  among  the  local 
lawyers  and  provincial  clergy,  and  get,  not  merely 
passing  glimpses  of  the  life  they  lead,  but  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  it  in  all  its  phases.  Again,  Trol- 
lope has  shown  us  Ireland,  which  he  knew  as  few 
Englishmen  have  ever  known  it,  in  all  its  wit  and 
pathos  and  squalor  and  improvidence.  And  In  this, 
as  in  all  he  wrote,  there  is  everywhere,  as  Hawthorne 
said,  the  human  nature  that  must  make  these  novels 


WC)    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

universally  successful  in  their  appeal  to  human  in- 
terests and  human  sympathies. 

Take,  then,  these  three  great  writers  and  compare 
them.  Balzac,  first  of  all,  the  master  of  his  craft, 
the  artist  and  the  psychologue,  who  in  drawing  all 
of  France  drew  also,  broadly  speaking,  all  human- 
ity. Then  Trollope,  far  more  limited  than  Balzac, 
because  there  were  depths  that  he  could  not  sound, 
as  there  were  unclean  haunts  that  he  refused  to  pene- 
trate, yet  still  one  who  revealed  his  country  and  his 
countrymen  more  fully  and  more  truly  than  any 
other  Englishman  has  ever  done.  And,  finally,  there 
is  Thackeray,  superior  in  some  things  to  Balzac, 
and  to  Trollope,  but  working  in  a  field  so  narrow, 
and  producing  what  is  comparatively  so  very  little, 
as  to  deserve  the  third  place  when  regarded  from  the 
standpoint  of  his  actual  achievement. 

There  are  many  things  that  make  a  parallel  be- 
tween Balzac  and  Anthony  Trollope  very  interesting. 
Each  passed  through  a  long  apprenticeship  to 
poverty ;  each  gave  much  thought  to  money  and  to 
material  things;  each  laboured  with  an  energy  that 
was  astonishing;  each  was  the  most  prolific  writer 
among  his  contemporaries;  each  knew  his  country 
and  his  countrymen  of  every  class  and  type  and 
station;  each  drew  them  as  they  were  and  are,  and 
with  a  thorough  understanding  of  humanity  at 
large;  and  each  stands  forth  as  the  novelist  of  a 
nation.     Trollope  has  written  nothing  that  can  be 


ANTHONY    TROLLOPE  197 

matched  with  Balzac  at  his  best ;  yet  he  has  never 
descended  to  the  inanity  of  Balzac  at  his  worst.  If 
he  could  not  have  penned  a  book  so  sombre  and  so 
terrible  as  Cousine  Bette,  neither  could  he  have 
brought  himself  to  perpetrate  so  wildly  meaningless 
a  screed  as  Scraphita.  If  his  pages  do  not  sting 
with  epigram,  they  glow  with  humour.  If  he  often 
shuts  his  eyes  to  what  is  foul  and  morbid  and  re- 
volting, he  sees  more  clearly  still  that  which  is  good 
and  true  and  tender.  In  a  word,  if  he  lacks  some- 
thing of  the  brilliancy  and  something  of  the  hard- 
ness and  something  of  the  unpitying  logic  of  the 
Frenchman,  all  this  but  makes  him  the  more  typically 
English,  and  gives  us  one  more  reason  for  believing 
that,  in  the  end,  when  the  swift  years  shall  have 
swept  away  the  cobweb  reputations  which  confuse 
men's  judgments  for  the  moment,  the  name  of 
Anthony  Trollope  will  rightfully  be  recognised  as 
first  upon  the  roll  of  England's  realistic  novelists. 


EMILE   ZOLA 


XI 

EMILE    ZOLA 

Had  Emile  Zola  died  some  fifteen  years  earlier 
than  he  actually  did,  the  comments  and  appreciations 
called  forth  by  his  death  would  have  had  for  their 
main  themes  the  peculiar  theory  of  fiction-writing 
which  he  so  passionately  upheld,  the  merits  of  the 
naturalistic  movement,  of  which  he  was  the  guiding 
force,  and  finally  those  literary  productions  in  which 
alike  the  theory  and  the  practice  of  literary  Natural- 
ism received  a  concrete  demonstration.  The  pages 
of  his  controversial  monographs,  Le  Roman  Expe- 
rimental and  Les  Romancicrs  Naturalistes,  would 
have  been  restudied  by  the  critics,  and  the  views  ex- 
pressed in  them  would  have  been  again  attacked,  de- 
fended and  discussed  with  all  the  heat  engendered  by 
a  novel  cause  that  is  still  sub  iudice. 

But  in  1902  the  note  of  interest  in  that  bygone 
controversy  was  no  longer  sounded,  even  as  a  rem- 
iniscence. Not  even  the  death  of  the  great  master 
revived  the  curious  feeling  of  astonishment  and  in- 
credulity that  passed  like  a  wave  over  so  many  minds 
when  Zola  first  enunciated  the  formula  whereby  he 
thought  that  he  had  transmuted  the  itultfinuble  magic 
of  an  art  into  the  precise  and  definite  dulncss  of  a 

301 


202    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

science.  The  intervening  years  have  long  ago  de- 
prived his  theory  of  even  its  piquant  flavour  of  orig- 
inahty.  His  behcf  that  hterature  is  comparable, 
not  to  painting  or  sculpture  or  music,  as  the  case 
may  be,  but  to  anatomy  and  physiology;  that  the 
novelist  is  a  demonstrator;  that  his  study  is  a  labo- 
ratory; and  that  he  can,  by  observation  and  re- 
search, illumined  by  imagination,  arrive  at  new  and 
unsuspected  truths  possessing  scientific  interest  and 
artistic  value — all  these  assertions  were  whistled 
down  the  wind  so  long  before  his  death  as  to  make 
the  simple  statement  of  them  now  appear  prepos- 
terous. 

An  artist's  theory  of  his  own  creative  processes 
is  never  of  much  general  interest  or  real  worth.  In 
the  long  run  the  world  does  not  care  much  about  the 
fancied  method  or  technique  through  which  memor- 
able things  are  done.  It  is  the  purest  folly  to  analyse 
an  inspiration  or  to  attempt  the  vivisection  of  elusive 
genius.  For,  at  the  very  last,  one  must  be  judged 
by  what  he  has  in  fact  achieved,  and  not  at  all  by 
the  peculiar  means  through  which  achievement  was 
accomplished.  So,  if  Zola,  when  he  sat  down  to  his 
desk  each  day  to  write  the  four  pages  which  con- 
stituted his  diurnal  task,  loved  to  regard  himself  as 
a  biologist  and  not  a  novelist,  as  a  demonstrator  in 
anatomy  and  not  an  artist,  that  circumstance  pos- 
sesses no  more  real  importance  to  the  world  at  large 
than  the  fact  that  Dumas  found  it  necessary  to  wear 
jack-boots  and  a  long  scarlet  coat  before  he  could 


EMILE    ZOLA  203 

compose  with  fluency,  or  that  Flaubert  could  do 
no  literary  work'  until  he  had  arrayed  himself  in 
velvet. 

These  were  the  idiosyncrasies  of  remarkable  men, 
and  they  have  a  personal  interest  as  being  bits  of 
intimate  and  curious  gossip.  Our  knowledge  of 
them  does  not,  however,  affect  even  in  the  most  im- 
perceptible degree  our  balanced  and  matured  opinion 
of  either  L'Assommoir  or  Monte  Crista  or  Madame 
Bovary.  It  is  not  what  Zola  thought  about  himself 
for  which  we  care.  It  is  rather  by  his  completed 
work,  no  matter  how  it  may  have  been  produced, 
that  we  judge  him  and  assign  to  him  his  place  in 
the  Pantheon  of  creative  genius. 

Zola  has  been  most  wofully  misunderstood  out- 
side of  France  by  those  whose  judgments  have  no 
reference  to  careful  knowledge.  By  many  he  has 
been  condemned  offhand  as  one  who  sought  for  por- 
nographic notoriety  because  it  promised  him  pecu- 
niary gain.  He  has  been  accused  of  deliberately 
striving  to  secure  success  by  sensational  and  un- 
worthy means,  by  pandering  to  pruriency  and 
becoming  for  pay  a  sort  of  literary  seneschal  to  sen- 
suality. In  other  words,  these  critics  would  not  dis- 
rriiiiinatc  between  Zola,  grimly  and  powerfully  work- 
ing out  a  great,  though  terrible,  conception,  and 
such  enervating  disciples  of  commercial  lubricity  as 
Adolphe  Belot  and  Paul  Ginlsty  and  Octave  IVIirbcau. 

Others,  again,  such  as  Max  Nordau,  would  have  us 
see  in  Zola  not  a  conscious  trader  in  literary  nasti- 


20t    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

ness,  but  an  unconscious  pervcnt,  essentially  neu- 
rotic, "  a  high-class  degenerate  with  some  peculiarly 
characteristic  stigmata  which  completely  establish 
the  diagnosis  "  afflicted  with  onomatomania  and  cop- 
rolalia. How  utterly  untrue  are  both  of  these  de- 
testable hypotheses,  a  very  brief  consideration  of 
the  facts  will  serve  to  show.  In  the  first  place,  we 
must  consider  the  literary  movement  in  which  he 
became  at  last  the  dominant  and  directing  influence ; 
and  then  we  must  recall  the  circumstances  of  his  own 
career. 

Realism  as  a  literary  motive  is  no  new  phenom- 
enon. It  is  as  old  as  Euripides  and  Alciphron 
among  the  Greeks.  It  was  developed  almost  to  its 
very  fullest  possible  expression  by  Petronius  among 
the  Romans.  After  the  Renaissance  it  is  seen  in  the 
picaresque  romances  which  represent  a  reaction  from 
the  stately  tedious  tales  of  chivalry,  just  as  in  Field- 
ing it  represents  a  like  reaction  against  the  fine-spun 
sentimcntalism  of  Richardson.  But  it  can  scarcely 
be  regarded  as  embodying  a  conscious  purpose  or  a 
definite  theory  before  the  early  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  when  Henri  Beyle  began  under  the 
pseudonym  of  "  Stendhal  "  to  dissect  with  an  un- 
shaking,  ruthless  hand  the  society  that  he  saw  about 
him,  laying  bare  as  with  a  surgeon's  knife  the  hide- 
ous ulcers,  the  angry  flesh  and  the  rotting  bones 
which  others  had  so  decorously  hidden  beneath  the 
flowers  of  their  fancy. 


EMILE    ZOLA  205 

Historically,  it  may  be  that  Rousseau  in  his  Con- 
fessions gave  the  first  suggestion  of  the  tremendous 
force  wliich  lies  in  naked  truth ;  but  if  so,  it  was  only 
a  suggestion ;  and  in  fiction,  at  any  rate,  the  begin- 
nings must  be  traced  to  Stendhal.  Realism,  how- 
ever, was  not  a  creation  or  a  rediscovery  by  any  one 
particular  man.  Its  germ  was  in  the  air.  It  was 
and  is  essentially  consistent  with  the  whole  tone  of 
modern  thought,  which  limits  the  scope  of  the  imag- 
ination, rejects  illusions  and  demands  in  a  spirit  of 
hardy  scepticism  to  view  the  thing  that  is,  rather 
than  the  thing  that  seems  to  be.  Democracy  in  poli- 
tics, rationalism  in  theology,  materialism  in  philos- 
ophy and  realism  in  literature,  are  very  closely 
linked  together.  They  are,  one  and  all,  simply  dif- 
ferent phases  of  the  same  mood  and  the  same  mental 
attitude  toward  life.  The  centuries  of  dreaminess 
have  gone  by  perhaps  forever,  and  to-day  man  looks 
with  keen  unclouded  vision  into  the  verities  of  his 
existence,  asking  no  one  to  prophesy  smooth  things, 
but  banishing  illusions,  uncovering  nakedness,  and 
facing  with  a  certain  hard  composure  born  of  cyni- 
cism, the  ghastly  facts  tliat  render  human  life  so 
terrible. 

This  being  so,  it  is  not  surprising  that  witherso- 
ever wo  may  turn  in  tlie  liistory  of  modern  fiction 
we  find  traces  of  the  tendency  away  from  the  roman- 
tic, and  not  least  of  all  in  the  very  romanticists  them- 
selves.    Even  as  early  us  C'huloaubriaiid,  whom  lit- 


■.y 


206    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

crary  historians  are  wont  to  style  "  the  Father  of 
Romanticism,"  you  can  detect  resemblances  to  the  la- 
ter development  of  Realism,  and  even  of  Naturalism. 
His  curious,  nauseating  book,  Rene,  is  from  one 
point  of  view  almost  the  prototype  of  A  Rehours; 
for  in  each  of  these  apparently  antithetical  studies 
the  central  theme  of  morbid  egoism  affects  the 
reader  in  precisely  the  same  way,  so  that  Rene  is 
morally  the  twin  brother  of  Des  Esseintes.  Indeed, 
Chateaubriand's  debilitating  story  goes  even  farther 
and  invokes  in  certain  of  its  episodes  the  stark  mon- 
strosity upon  which  Mendcs  in  our  own  time  reared 
the  structure  of  that  shameful  and  vertiginous  de- 
lirium, Zoliar;  and  in  Victor  Hugo,  too,  there  are 
innumerable  chapters  which  are  realistic  in  the 
fullest  meaning  of  the  word.  A  single  scene  of 
Notre  Dame,  where  in  the  Cour  des  Miracles  all  the 
leprous,  loathsome  life  of  the  social  sewer  is  revealed 
to  us  by  an  effective  tour  de  force,  may  be  safely 
set  beside  anything  that  Zola  ever  Avrote  for  its 
sheer  lavishness  in  squalor,  its  multitudinous  heap- 
ing up  of  sordid  and  unsavoury  details,  and  a  cer- 
tain breadth  and  sweep  in  its  vivid  rhyparography 
which  render  it  a  sort  of  minor  epic  of  the  slums. 

The  general  drift  of  the  realistic  movement  from 
Stendhal  to  Flaubert  is  too  well  known  for  recapitu- 
lation here.  We  see  it  mingled  with  idealistic  ten- 
dencies in  the  colossal  life-work  of  Balzac.  W^e  find 
it  meretriciously,  yet  most  effectively,  appearing  in 


r 


EMILE    ZOLA  207 

Germinie  Lacerteux  of  the  brothers  Goncourt,  a 
book  which  doubtless  gave  to  Zola  many  a  subtle 
hint.  It  reaches  absolute  perfection  with  Madame 
Bovary,  into  which  novel  Flaubert  laboriously  dis- 
tilled the  thought  and  observation  and  minutely 
technical  stylistic  preciosity  of  a  lifetime.  Realism, 
as  such,  can  never  go  beyond  what  Flaubert  care- 
fully wrought  for  us  in  this  one  exquisitely-finished 
etching,  of  which  every  line  is  bitten  out  as  by  an 
acid  upon  metal,  and  of  which,  in  consequence,  the 
sombre  memory  can  never  die.  Nothing  that  Sten- 
dhal wrote,  no  single  work  of  Balzac  even,  is  com- 
parable with  this  depressing  masterpiece  of  Gustavo 
Flaubert,  whose  art  is  flawless  as  a  gem,  and  whose 
accurate  dissection  of  the  human  soul  is  as  disquiet- 
ing as  the  sting  of  an  awakened  conscience.  After 
Flaubert  came  Zola, — not  to  work  further  miracles 
in  the  name  of  Realism,  but  to  give  to  Realism  a 
new  development  and  to  call  it  Naturalism. 

It  should  be  always  borne  in  mind  that  Emile 
Zola  never  was,  in  any  sense,  Parisian.  It  is  only 
on  his  mother's  side,  indeed,  that  he  was  French.  Ills 
father  was  of  Italian  origin.  Ills  grandmother  was 
a  Greek  of  (Jorfu.  The  Influence  of  atavism,  which 
ho  himself  selected  as  the  central  motive  of  his  most 
striking  studies,  is  clearly  seen  in  Eniile  Zola.  From 
his  Italian  father,  the  successful  engineer  and  would- 
be  author,  came  the  ambition  for  great  achiovcment, 
the    love    of    letters,    the    passion    and    energy    of 


208    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

an  intense  nature,  and  the  imagination  of  a 
tragic  poet.  To  the  Greek  strain  in  him  is  to 
be  ascribed  an  instinctive  love  of  beauty,  which 
by  a  curious  psychological  permutation  he  displays 
so  often  in  an  inverted  form.  From  his  Norman 
mother  came  the  steadiness  and  shrewdness  which 
stamp  the  bourgeoisie  of  Northern  France. 

His  childhood,  like  Balzac's,  was  passed  wholly 
en  province,  away  from  Paris,  in  the  freedom  and 
healthfulness  of  the  country;  and  it  was  only  when 
the  years  of  early  manhood  came,  that  the  youthful 
Zola  was  thrust  into  the  strife  and  turmoil  of  Pari- 
sian life  to  make  his  own  way,  quite  unbefriendcd 
and  pitifully  poor,  in  the  most  beautiful  and  most 
heartless  city  of  our  modern  world.  Some  account 
of  the  squalid  years  through  which  he  lived  in  that 
depressing  period,  he  gave  himself  not  long  before 
liis  death ;  yet  even  he  was  chary  of  recalling  too 
particularly  all  he  saw  and  felt  and  suffered. 

In  the  foul  environment  of  a  hotel  horgne  he  be- 
held about  him  every  type  of  want  and  degradation 
and  debauchery.  His  eyes  perpetually  rested  on 
strange  scenes  of  sin  and  shame  in  that  undenvorld 
where  men  and  women  herd  together  reduced  by  piti- 
less despair  to  the  condition  of  mere  animals,  know- 
ing no  law  but  the  law  of  their  own  appetites  and 
preying  upon  one  another  to  satisfy  their  hunger, 
their  greed,  or  the  craving  of  their  elemental  lusts. 
His  senses  felt  the  heavy  burden  of  physical  distress 


EMILE    ZOLA  209 

in  all  the  sights  and  sounds  and  smells  of  that  un- 
savoury habitation.  The  greasy  stairs,  the  oozing 
walls,  the  pungent  stenches  as  from  a  wild  beast's 
lair,  the  darkness  even  at  midday,  the  wailing  of 
diseased  and  dying  children,  the  vociferous  obsceni- 
ties of  the  brutal  bully,  the  yell  of  the  enraged 
prostitute  who  is  cheated  of  her  hire,  and  the  whim- 
pering and  maundering  of  the  sodden  drunkard  on 
the  landing — who  that  has  once  set  foot  within  the 
walls  of  such  a  place  for  even  a  brief  moment  has 
not  had  the  loathsome  memory  of  it  burned  into 
his  brain  forever? 

Yet  for  two  long  years  amid  these  scenes  of  physi- 
cal and  moral  horror  into  which  he  had  come  straight 
from  the  sweet  tranquillity  of  the  sunlit  meadows, 
young  Zola  lived  and  learned  by  heart  the  lesson  of 
it  all.  Even  then  the  creative  impulse  was  strong 
upon  him.  At  night  (the  only  time  that  was  his 
own)  he  shut  himself  within  his  miserable  room,  and 
when  he  could  afford  the  luxury  of  a  candle  he  wrote, 
with  fingers  numbed  by  cold,  such  stories  as  would  in 
imagination  free  him  most  completely  from  the 
squalors  that  oppressed  him.  He  was  still  an 
idealist  at  heart,  and  perhaps  the  ilUisions  of  his 
boyhood  still  cast  their  spell  upon  him ;  for  there 
was  as  yet  no  trace  in  either  subject  or  in  style  of 
the  Zola  whom  the  world  bi-st  knows.  Romantic 
fancies  came  most  readily  from  his  pen,  and,  strange 
as  it  may  appear,  he  even  gave  his  thoughts  exprcs- 


210    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

sion  in  poetic  form.  At  last,  however,  his  circum- 
stances gradually  improved.  He  secured  a  very 
humble  place  in  the  publishing  house  of  Hachette, 
and  in  1864*  saw  his  first  book  issue  from  the  press. 
This  book  was  the  collection  entitled  Contes  a  Ninon, 
than  which  nothing  could  be  more  unlike  the  later 
Zola.  It  brought  him  nothing  in  the  way  of  money, 
but  it  made  him  friends,  and  he  began  to  write 
ephemeral  articles  for  the  press  while  still  continuing 
his  work  in  fiction.  Entrusted  with  the  art  criticism 
in  the  Figaro,  he  wrote  with  a  boldness  and  a  vigor- 
ous independence  which  defied  restraint,  so  that  he 
soon  lost  the  post  in  gaining  enemies,  among  them 
the  editor  himself,  the  influential  Villemessant.  Al- 
most at  the  same  time,  a  novel  of  his.  La  Confession 
de  Claude,  to  which  the  censorship  objected,  led  to 
the  severance  of  his  connection  with  Hachette,  so 
that  for  a  time  he  was  once  more  dependent  upon  his 
own  resources,  and  the  precarious  earnings  of  his 
pen.  These  facts  alone  are  quite  sufficient  to  con- 
vince a  reasonable  mind  that  Zola  from  the  very 
outset  of  his  career  possessed  the  courage  of  his 
convictions,  and  that  no  man  was  less  likely  than  he 
to  sell  his  literary  conscience  for  a  price. 

Success  came  to  him  very  slowly.  He  was  long 
in  finding  what  it  was  he  wished  to  do  and  in  con- 
centrating his  intensely  energetic  nature  on  the  task. 
The  first  clear  light  that  dawned  upon  him  was 
when  he  wrote  Therese  Raquin,  forever  to  be  ranked 


EMILE    ZOLA  211 

among  his  masterpieces,  and  standing  almost  alone 
as  a  searching,  horrifying  study  of  remorse,  of 
which  Vapereau  remarks  that  it  depicts  "  adultery 
taking  refuge  in  murder  and  finding  only  agony." 
Yet  remarkable  as  is  this  novel,  its  interest  for  us  is 
less  than  that  inspired  by  the  first  of  the  Rougon- 
Macquart  series.  La  Fortune  des  liougon,  which  ap- 
peared in  1871.  With  this  book  the  author  once  for 
all  sets  foot  upon  sure  ground,  and  in  the  plan  which 
he  had  outlined  two  years  before,  he  shows  a  con- 
sciousness of  his  own  great  powers  and  boldly  chal- 
lenges comparison  with  Balzac. 

In  explaining  his  purpose  in  commencing  this 
Histoire  Naturelle  et  Sociale  d'une  Famille  sous  le 
Second  Empire  he  wrote  of  it  as  follows : 

I  desire  to  explain  how  a  single  family,  a  little  group  of 
human  beings,  comes  into  relations  with  society  at  large,  as 
it  increases  by  begetting  and  giving  birth  to  ten  or  twenty 
individuals,  who,  though  at  first  sight  they  seem  quite  dis- 
similar, when  analysed  reveal  how  intimately  they  are  bound 
together,  since  heredity  has  laws  as  well  as  mathematics. 
The  members  of  the  family  Rougon-Macquart,  the  one  group 
that  it  is  my  purpose  to  depict,  have  as  a  family  trait  the 
gnawing  of  lust,  the  appetite  that  leaps  to  its  gratification. 
Historically  they  are  a  jjart  of  the  jn-ople;  they  make  tiiem- 
Belves  felt  by  contemporary  society;  tlicy  rise  to  see  spheres 
of  life  by  that  characteristically  modern  impulse  which  the 
lower  classes  feci;  and  thus  they  explain  the  Second  Empire 
by  their  individual  histories. 

In  these  words  Zola  inlroduccd  that  remarkable 
group  of  twenty  novels,  beginning  with  La  Fortune 


212    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

des  Eoiigon  and  ending  in  1893  with  Le  Docteur 
Pascal.  To  this  group  belongs  the  very  best  of  all 
that  Zola  did.  When  it  was  finished  he  had  done  all 
that  makes  him  a  distinctive  figure  in  the  world  of 
letters.  The  plan  of  the  series,  sketched  in  1869, 
was  based  upon  a  genealogy  which  he  had  carefully 
worked  out.  In  this  genealogy  the  starting  point  is 
with  Pierre  Rougon  of  Plassans,  his  half-brother 
Antoine  Macquart,  and  his  half-sister  Ursula  Mac- 
quart.  The  mother  of  the  three  developed  a  con- 
genital neurotic  disorder,  which  appears  and  reap- 
pears in  her  descendants  of  two  generations,  these 
being  the  principal  characters  of  the  different  books. 
Lisa,  in  Le  Ventre  de  Paris,  exhibits  a  clinging,  cloy- 
ing sensuality ;  Gervaise,  in  L^Assommoir,  reverts 
to  the  alcoholism  of  her  grandfather;  Nana,  in  the 
novel  of  that  name,  typifies  triumphant  har- 
lotry ;  Jacques,  in  La  Bete  Humaine,  is  cursed  with 
homicidal  mania ;  while  in  the  Rougon  branch  of  the 
family,  the  protagonists  exhibit  an  intense  ambition, 
as  for  money  in  U Argent,  for  scientific  achievement, 
as  in  Le  Docteur  Pascal,  for  political  power  in  Son 
Excellence  Eugene  Rougon,  where  Zola  has  drawn 
with  a  sure,  firm  touch  the  portrait  of  Napoleon 
Third's  powerful  minister  Eugene  Rouher.  These 
are  but  a  few  of  the  ramifications  of  the  Rougon- 
Macquart  stock;  yet  it  will  be  seen,  even  from  this 
Incomplete  enumeration,  how  many  sides  of  life  the 
author    necessarily    touches    in    delineating   them — • 


EMILE    ZOLA  213 

passing  from  the  garret,  the  brasserie  and  the  gut- 
ter, to  the  camp,  the  Bourse  and  the  imperial  palace. 

Some  timid,  twittering  literary  scribblers  have 
sapiently  asked  of  late  whether  Zola's  works  will 
live.  The  question  is  the  acme  of  fatuity.  That 
all  he  wrote  will  live,  in  the  sense  that  it  will  be  gen- 
erally read,  is,  of  course,  untrue.  In  this  sense  it  can 
not  be  said  of  any  modem  author,  outside,  perhaps, 
of  a  group  of  three  or  four,  that  his  work  will  live. 
Zola  was  a  very  prolific  writer,  and  his  successes  were 
surpassed  in  number  by  his  failures.  Even  now,  few 
persons  who  are  not  professional  students  of  litera- 
ture know  anything  of  La  Confession  de  Claude  or 
Madeleine  Fcrat  or  Celle  Qui  M'Aime;  and  before 
long,  many  of  Zola's  other  novels,  such  as  La  Joie 
de  Vivre  and  VOeuvre  and  that  glorified  guide-book, 
Rome,  with  his  other  works  of  his  last  ten  years, 
will  be  remembered  by  their  titles  only.  Not  all  of 
the  Rougon-Macquart  series  will  stand  the  test  of 
time.  U Argent  and  Germinal  and  La  Tcrre  will 
always  find  some  readers  among  the  discriminating, 
though  not  belonging  to  the  imperishable  literature 
of  the  world.  Out  of  the  whole  mass  of  Zola's 
works,  however,  there  loom  up  three  colossal  master- 
pieces, so  wonderful,  so  overwlielming  In  the  evi- 
dence of  genius  which  they  afford,  and  so  impossible 
to  forget,  as  to  be  assured  of  an  unquestioned  im- 
mortality. 

These  three  masterpieces  are  UAssommoir,  Nana, 


21i    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

and  La  Debacle,  and  they  are  linked  so  closely  in 
their  purpose  and  in  the  development  of  one  domi- 
nant idea,  as  to  form  a  trilogy  from  which  no  mem- 
ber can  be  removed.  They  are  the  residuum — the 
ondurins:  residuum — of  the  whole  ambitious  series 
of  the  Rougon-Macquart ;  and  they,  above  and  apart 
from  any  of  their  companion  volumes,  effect  the  pur- 
pose which  Zola  formed  in  1869  of  explaining 
through  the  medium  of  fiction  the  social  life  and  the 
political  decadence  of  the  Second  Empire.  This  is 
precisely  what  these  three  extraordinary  books  ac- 
complish; and  in  writing  them  their  author  was  in- 
spired far  more  than  perhaps  he  ever  knew.  For 
the  three  exhibit  an  unbroken  sequence,  and  they 
work  out  with  all  the  precision  and  the  surencss  of 
a  scientific  demonstration  the  thesis  which  was  in  the 
writer's  mind.  In  V Assommolr  we  have  to  do  with 
individuals ;  in  Nana,  with  society ;  in  La  Debacle, 
with  an  entire  nation.  In  U Assommolr  there  are  ex- 
hibited to  us  the  vicious  influences  which  beset  the 
proletariat,  the  leaven  of  evil  and  uncleanness  work- 
ing amidst  the  haunts  and  hovels  of  the  degraded 
poor.  In  Nana  the  poison  spreads  and  eats  its  way 
like  a  cancer  into  the  homes  of  those  who  live  in  the 
great  world.  In  La  Debacle  we  see  a  chivalrous  and 
gallant  nation  infected  with  the  foul  disease,  and 
smitten  to  the  earth  because  of  the  rottenness  that 
has  eaten  out  its  manhood  and  destroyed  its  strength. 
L'Assommoir,   as  we  have  said,  deals  with  indi- 


i  VAss 


EMILE    ZOLA  215 

viduals,  the  central  figures  being  th^  blanchis sense, 
Gervaise,  and  her  husband,  the  tinsmith  Coupeau. 
Gervaise  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  characters  in 
fiction — and  all  the  more  because  she  is  drawn  so 
simply  and  so  naturally,  and  because  there  is  not 
the  slightest  touch  of  the  melodramatic  in  her  story, 
no  high  lights  jSUchtts-^ttgo  loved,  no  false  senti- 
ment and  no  moralising.  She  is  a  figure  stepping 
before  us  straight  out  of  life  itself.  A  womanly, 
affectionate,  naturally  gentle  creature,  she  appears 
in  the  first  chapter  of  the  book  as  the  cast-ofF  mis- 
tress of  a  vulgar  maquereau,  one  Lantier,  whom  she 
has  sincerely  loved,  but  who  has  suddenly  deserted 
her  and  her  children.  In  time  she  meets  the  tinsmith, 
Coupeau,  who  marries  her,  and  with  whom  she  begins 
her  life  anew  with  every  prospect  of  a  good,  hard- 
working, happy,  uneventful,  every-day  existence.  But 
Coupeau  suffers  an  accident  which  disables  him  for 
a  while  and  he  acquires  the  habits  of  idleness  and 
drink.  He  lives  upon  his  wife;  she  also  takes  to 
drink ;  and  there  begins  a  gradual  degradation 
which  is  detailed  with  patient  minuteness  through  all 
its  squalid,  shameful,  sickening  stages  until  it  ends 
in  a  dog's  death  for  l)()tli — Gervaise  a  bedraggled 
street-walker,  sodden,  hopeless  and  void  of  any  feel- 
ing, even  of  despair,  and  Coupeau  a  furious  maniac, 
meeting  his  death  with  frantic  yells  of  horror  at  the 
hideous  fancies  of  his  gin-crazed  brain. 

Around  these  two  poor  wretches  the  action  of  the 


216    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

story  surges,  panoramic  in  its  multitudinous  life, 
gigantic  in  its  sweep  and  breadth  and  terrific  in 
its  concentrated  vitriolic  power.  The  whole  stratum 
of  that  world  to  which  Gervaise  and  Lantier  and 
Coupeau  belong  is  revealed  so  vividly  and  so  un- 
sparingly that  there  is  nothing  left  to  ask  or  tell. 
We  know  not  merely  the  Coupeau  menage,  but  we 
know  also  a  whole  swarm  of  human  beings,  each  one 
distinctly  individualised, — artisans,  petty  shopkeep- 
ers, policemen,  washerwomen,  bullies,  panders,  drabs 
and  drunkards — the  whole  population  of  the  slums. 
There  are  some  genre  pictures  in  the  book  that  are 
extraordinary  in  their  stark  veracity — the  marriage 
of  Gervaise  at  the  mairie,  and  the  wedding  breakfast 
at  the  Moulin  d'Argcnt ;  and  later  in  the  book  the 
maudlin  revel  amid  which  Lantier,  the  former  lover 
of  Gervaise,  once  more  appears  as  a  bird  of  evil  omen. 
Heart-rending  is  the  story  of  the  poor,  patient  child, 
Lalie,  whose  drunken  father,  BIjard,  flogs  her  to 
make  her  dance  for  him  until  she  says  quite  gently 
and  very  simply:  "Je  ne  puis  pas,  comprcnds-tu.? 
Je  vais  mourir.  .  .  Sois  gentil  a  cette  heure,  et 
dis-moi  adieu,  papa."  And  among  the  most  awful 
of  all  episodes  in  fiction  is  the  chapter  where  Ger- 
vaise, tempted  by  Lantier  to  renew  her  old  relations 
with  him,  returns  to  her  home  to  find  her  husband 
stretched  across  their  chamber  floor,  helpless  with 
drink  and  wallowing  in  his  vomit,  so  that  Gervaise, 
repelled  and  overcome  by  the  sickening  sight,  yields 


EMILE    ZOLA  217 

to  Lantier's  entreaties  and  passes  with  him  into  the 
inner  room,  while  her  child  Nana,  unobserved,  peers 
through  the  dusky  window  with  eyes  illumined  by  a 
vicious  curiosity. 

In  L'Assommoir  is  best  studied  the  climax  of 
Zola's  so-called  Naturalism,  which  has  been  defined 
as  "  an  attempt  to  reach  the  boast  in  man.  .  .  the 
beast  which  his  (the  writer's)  temperament  leads  him 
always  to  see  and  to  see  exclusively.  A  swarming, 
huddled  mass  of  grovelling  creatures,  each  hounded 
by  his  foul  appetite  of  greed  and  lust."  And  Zola 
finds  the  beast  unerringly ;  nor  does  he  spare  us  one 
detail  of  its  bestiality.  His  beasts  growl  in  the 
language  of  their  kind.  Those  words  which  one  is 
startled  to  behold  in  print  are  all  set  down  with  an 
unflinching  accuracy.  The  oaths,  the  blasphemies, 
the  obscenities  of  the  vilest  of  men  and  women,  their 
strange,  repulsive  argot,  half-unintelllgible  yet  full 
of  sinister  significance,  are  reproduced  for  us,  and 
show  the  knowledge  gleaned  in  the  unsavoury  pre- 
cinct of  the  hotel  horgnc.  For  Zola  has  a  purpose 
in  his  frankness.  He  desires  us  to  sec  as  in  a  socio- 
logical clinic  the  muck-heaps  over  which  society  has 
buildcd,  that  he  may  prepare  us  for  a  demonstration 
of  the  logical  result.     ^ 

Such  a  demonstration  is  given  us  in  Nana.  The 
purpose  of  this  l)ook  is  admirably  described  by  an 
American  critic  as  an  attempt  to  show  us  how  the 
crushed    and    mud-stained    rabble    inflicts    upon    the 


218    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

classes  that  are  gorf^cd  with  wealth  and  insolent  with 
power  a  kind  of  hideous  retribution.  Nana  is  the 
daughter  of  Gervaise,  born  among  the  lowest  haunts 
of  Paris  and  nurtured  in  close  proximity  to  the  gut- 
ters. Depraved  even  as  a  child  by  association  with 
other  children  prematurely  initiated  into  every  form 
of  vice,  she  breathes  of  sensuality  and  exhales  the 
very  aroma  of  lasciviousness,  so  that  men  of  every 
rank  and  station  feel  her  strange,  tormenting  physi- 
cal fascination.  Yet  she  is  not  herself  a  devotee  of 
passion  for  its  own  sake.  She  loves  as  the  caprice 
of  the  moment  moves  her — now  the  inexperienced 
boy  whom  she  corrupts,  now  the  aristocratic  cour- 
tier, and  again,  and  perhaps  most  of  all,  the  goat- 
faced  acrobat,  Fontan,  who  beats  her  and  who  lives 
upon  her  shameful  earnings.  But  she  is,  first  and 
foremost,  wanton  greed  personified.  To  quote  again: 

She  is  conceived  as  some  fair  ogress  into  whose  yawning 
cave  multitudes  of  men  in  hurried  and  endless  procession 
descend  and  are  engulfed.  There  is  room  for  all  ranks  and 
grades  of  this  social  hierarchy.  .  .  It  is  merely  indis- 
pensable that  each  shall  bring  an  offering  of  some  kind  in 
his  hand.  He  that  can  not  defray  the  charge  of  the  estab- 
lishment may  pay  the  dressmaker;  another  shall  furnish  pin- 
money;  another  trinkets  and  bouquets.  There  is  a  certain 
breadth  and  grandeur  in  her  insatiate  greed  and  compre- 
hensive harlotry;  her  net  drags  great  and  small;  she  seems 
to  have  infected  a  whole  city.  .  .  She  has  grown  like  a 
rank  weed  amid  the  garbage  of  the  Parisian  pavement;  she 
has  the  gorged  luxuriance  of  a  plant  whose  turgid  leaves 
betray  its  compost  bed.  With  the  superb  curves  of  her  deli- 
cate  flesh   she   avenges   the   beggars    and   outcasts   who   gave 


EMILE    ZOLA  219 

her  birth.  She  becomes  a  malignant  force  of  nature,  a  pes- 
tiferous yeast,  tainting  and  disintegrating  Paris,  turning  it 
sour  like  curdled  milk.  In  one  chapter  she  is  compared  to  a 
gold-spangled  horsefly,  spawned  from  ordure,  hovering  above 
the  carrion  that  lies  rotting  by  the  wayside,  sending  vermin 
from  its  putrescence,  and  poisoning  the  wayfarer  whose 
cheek  it  brushes  with  its  fetid  wins;.  ...  At  length 
the  task  of  ruin  and  death  is  completed;  wretchedness  has 
spent  its  store  of  venom;  Nana  has  exacted  blood-money  for 
her  bruised  and  smarting  kindred.  The  beggar  and  the  out- 
cast are  avenged. 

The  whole  book  is  a  minute  and  startling  study  of 
the  infection  not  only  of  Paris  but  of  France;  and 
its  multiplicity  of  details  and  its  extraordinary  first- 
hand knowledge  of  the  darker  side  of  Parisian  social 
life  astonish  and  appal.  For  Nana  is  only  one  of  a 
number  of  her  kind  who  flit  across  the  scene ;  and  in 
the  tainting  influence  which  they  exercise,  we  feel  in- 
stinctively the  doom  of  an  Empire  in  which  a  plague- 
spot  such  as  this  is  festering  and  spreading.  It  is 
not  alone  the  wantonness  of  Nana  that  we  recognise; 
it  is  the  presence  In  the  background  of  Influences 
far  more  sinister  than  hers.  The  enigmatical  episode 
of  Mine.  Laure  and  the  implications  in  the  story  of 
the  girl  Satin  are  full  of  strangely  baleful  Import 
wlion  read  between  the  lines.  And,  as  the  book  pro- 
ceeds, we  see  quite  clearly  that  the  menace  of  its 
meaning  is  more  than  a  menace  to  mere  individuals, 
and  that  the  very  vitals  of  a  nation  are  growing 
putrid  with  disease  and  death,  "^riii-  las!  frw  jiagos 
indicate  almost   symbolically   the   (i()f)m    that   is    Im- 


220    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

pending  over  France ;  for  while  Nana  lies  dying,  with 
her  once  seductive  face  transformed  by  smallpox  into 
a  repulsive  mask,  we  hear,  outside,  the  rabble,  drunken 
with  war's  blood-madness,  give  utterance  to  the 
frantic  cry  of  "A  Berlin  !    A  Berlin  !  " 

La  Debacle  shows  the  garnered  fruits  of  what  has 
gone  before.  A  debased  and  brutalised  proletariat, 
corrupting  its  masters  with  noxious  vices  that  rise 
from  the  social  cesspools  into  the  mansions  of  the 
great,  has  done  its  work,  and  now  the  moment  comes 
when  the  ruin  is  revealed.  France,  challenged  in  her 
supremacy,  has  thrown  down  the  gage  of  war,  and 
the  trumpets  sound  to  battle.  The  hclmeted  hosts 
of  Germany  have  crossed  the  Rhine ;  the  trail  of 
their  huge  columns  desecrates  French  soil.  The  old 
martial  ardour  leaps  again  to  life,  the  furor  GalUcus 
flames  up  once  more,  apparently  as  invincible  as  in 
the  days  of  Jena  and  of  Austerlitz.  But  alas! 
France  is  herself  no  longer.  Her  brain  has  been 
drugged  by  years  of  luxury ;  her  energy  is  sapped 
by  vice;  she  reels  and  totters  to  her  fall.  Here  in- 
dividuals no  longer  count;  and  Zola  rises  to  an  epic 
vastness  of  execution  as  he  draws  that  masterful 
picture  of  blended  defiance  and  despair  in  the  armies 
which  go  forth  like  misdirected  mobs — their  aimless 
marching  and  countermarching,  their  woful  lack 
of  leadership,  their  pitiful  privation  in  the  midst  of 
plenty,  until  at  last  their  splendid  courage  becomes 
abject  cowardice  when  they  are  paralysed  by  the  ter- 


EMILE    ZOLA  221 

rible  conviction  that  they  have  been  betrayed.  The 
vividness  of  all  this  portion  of  the  story  is  inde- 
scribable. The  reader  is  hurried  on  with  breathless 
interest  from  scene  to  scene — the  bloody  struggle 
at  Bazeilles,  the  horrors  of  Sedan,  the  glaring  flames 
that  mark  the  triumph  of  the  mad  Commune.  And 
here  and  there  we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  infinitely 
mournful  figure  of  the  Third  Napoleon,  dragged 
along  at  the  tail  of  his  army,  unnoticed,  helpless  and 
despairing,  as  his  haggard  face,  made  still  more 
ghastly  by  its  rouge,  peers  forth  above  the  golden 
bees  that  symbolise  his  fallen  dynasty.  For  sus- 
tained and  almost  savage  power,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
no  prose  work  of  the  nineteenth  century  can  fully 
equal  La  Debacle. 

The  two  writers  with  whom  Zola  must  inevitably 
be  compared  are  Balzac  and  Victor  Hugo, — Balzac 
because  the  whole  conception  of  the  Rougon-Mac- 
quart  was  suggested  by  the  Comcdie  Huviainc;  and 
Hugo  because  he,  too,  like  Zola,  was  dynamic  in  his 
method.  The  comparison  with  Balzac  only  leaves 
us  with  a  heightened  sense  of  that  great  master's 
sure  supremacy.  Not  merely  was  his  plan  tlie  vaster, 
but  although  his  death  left  it  unfinished  in  details,  he 
really  did  complete  it,  and  at  the  moment  of  his 
death  was  still  possessed  of  all  lils  pristine  power. 

There  is  no  part  of  the  Comcdie  Ilumaine  that  any 
lover  of  Immortal  genius  can  neglect  or  overlook; 
while  Zola,  working  out  a  smaller  plan,  grew  weary 


222    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

of  his  task,  and  wrote  the  last  volume  of  the  scries 
with  a  flagging,  hesitating  pen.  But  with  Hugo 
the  comparison  brings  out  into  the  clearest  possible 
relief  the  immense  superiority  of  Zola.  For  while 
Hugo  is  at  times  stupendous  in  the  gigantic  energy 
with  which  he  works,  he  never  ceases  to  impress  us 
as  theatrical.  At  his  best  he  is  less  dramatic  than 
melodramatic;  and  while  we  admire  and  are  aston- 
ished, it  is  with  the  kind  of  admiration  and  astonish- 
ment that  we  give  to  a  carefully  prepared  and  gor- 
geous spectacle  upon  the  stage.  We  marvel  at  the 
ingenuity  of  his  effects ;  but  even  as  we  marvel  we 
find  ourselves  considering  them  a  miracle  of  stage 
management  rather  than  a  spontaneous  creation  of 
artistic  genius.  With  him  sublimity  shades  off  into 
the  grotesque,  and  his  most  tremendous  imagery  for- 
ever trembles  upon  the  verge  of  the  fantastic.  He 
knew  not  when  to  stay  his  hand,  and  the  unerring 
instinct  which  teaches  the  true  artist  where  to  pause 
was  never  his.  He  is  sometimes  magnificent,  but  he 
is  oftener  bizarre.  The  eternal  vanity  of  Hugo,  his 
self-consciousness  and  his  pose  make  almost  every- 
thing he  wrote  ring  false. 

But  with  Zola  the  case  is  otherwise.  The  great, 
unbending,  pitiless  sincerity  of  the  man  grips  you 
as  in  a  vise,  and  at  his  best  he  masters  emotion,  im- 
agination and  belief  with  a  spell  which  is  impossible 
to  break.  Compare  the  greatest  scenes  in  Hugo — 
that  of  the  devil-fish  in  Les  Travnilleurs  de  la  MeVy 
that  of  the  life-and-death  struggle  in  Bug-Jargal, 


EMILE    ZOLA  223 

that  of  the  battle  between  man  and  cannon  in 
Quatre-Vingt-Treize — with  the  most  famous  things 
in  Zola,  and  the  difference  is  the  difference  between 
the  acted  tragedy  of  the  theatre  and  the  crushing, 
poignant  tragedies  of  human  life. 

Since  Shakespeare's  time  no  English  writer,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  has  arisen 
fit  to  be  compared  with  any  one  of  these  great 
Frenchmen  for  sheer  vitality  and  overwhelming 
power.  How  cold  and  pale  our  Anglo-Saxon  fiction 
looks  beside  the  splendid  unrestraint  of  the  master- 
pieces of  French  genius !  Even  Thackeray  seems 
merely  an  amiable,  mildly  cynical,  grandfatherly  sort 
of  person  when  we  come  to  him  straight  from  the 
reading  of  Cousine  Bette  or  L'Assojnmoir;  while 
Dickens  shrinks  to  the  proportions  of  a  Cockney 
sentimentalist  whose  maudlin  moments  are  varied 
with  sporadic  bursts  of  forced  buffoonery.  What- 
ever France  has  come  to  be  among  the  political  forces 
of  the  world,  her  sons  still  keep  the  flame  of  genius 
brilliantly  aglow.  And  not  the  least  among  them  was 
Emile  Zola — in  temperament  an  epic  poet,  in  ambi- 
tion a  literary  sociologist,  in  fact  a  cyclopean  pano- 
ramic artist.  Of  his  own  theories  and  of  his  own 
motives  nothing  new  can  now  be  said,  nor  does  it 
matter  what  one  thinks  of  them.  His  work  speaks 
for  itself;  and  literary  analysts  wlio  know  and  un- 
derstand that  work  must  feel  that  in  his  death  a 
mighty  elemental  influence  passed  away  from  earth. 


TOLSTOI'S    "ANNA    KARENINA" 


XII 

TOLSTOI'S  "  ANNA  KARENINA  " 

Opinions  may  perhaps  differ  as  to  which  one  of 
Tolstoi's  novels  should  be  set  first  among  his  great 
,  literary  achievements.  Some  may  incline  to  War 
and  Peace,  that  astonishing  prose  epic  which,  in  Its 
own  way,  recalls  Zola's  cyclopean  picture  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  War.  Over  this  work  Tolstoi  cer- 
tainly brooded  longest.  His  wife  copied  the  manu- 
script of  it  seven  times ;  and  each  time  that  she 
copied  it,  Tolstoi  altered,  added,  and  erased  with  the 
minutely  critical  assiduity  of  a  Balzac.  Others 
again  may  see  in  Resurrection  the  crowning  proof 
of  his  peculiar  genius,  because  it  so  swecpingly  de- 
nounces what  most  of  us  believe  to  be  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  social  and  political  stability.  But, 
on  the  whole,  one's  thought  rests  longest  upon  Anna 
Karenina;  and  this  remarkable  book,  written  in  its 
author's  mid-career,  seems  worthy  of  the  highest 
place. 

There  arc  two  reasons  which  support  this  judg- 
ment. In  the  first  place,  the  novel  represents  more 
completely  than  any  other  modern  book  yet  written, 
a  somewhat  unusual  theory  of  fiction-writing.  In 
the  second  place,  as  Tolstoi  long  afterward  himself 
declared,  a  good  part  of  it  is  autobiograj)hical.     In 

227 


228    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

it,  Tolstoi  has  painted  his  own  portrait  for  us. 
Therefore,  Arvna  Karenina  has  some  of  that  special 
interest  for  the  students  of  Tolstoi  which  David  Cop- 
perficld  possesses  for  the  admirers  of  Dickens.  So 
far  as  the  power  of  it  goes,  this  is  fully  equal  to  the 
power  displayed  in  any  of  his  creations.  The  added 
value  of  his  literary  theory,  and  the  frankness  of 
his  unsparing  self-revelation,  seem  to  place  the  story 
at  the  very  head  of  the  long  list  of  books  which  this 
strange,  pessimistic  Russian  has  given  to  the  world. 

Anna  Karenina  was  completed  in  1876,  having 
been  published  as  a  serial  in  a  Russian  newspaper. 
It  had  no  great  success  in  Russia  at  the  time.  Later 
it  was  analysed  and  praised  by  Matthew  Arnold  in 
England  and  by  William  Dean  Howells  in  this 
country.  From  that  time  began  its  vogue.  Arnold, 
with  his  usual  acuteness,  saw  at  once  just  how  this 
story  differed  from  ordinary  novels,  and  even  from 
the  other  novels  of  Tolstoi  himself.  He  laid  an  un- 
erring finger  on  the  fact  which  explains  just  why 
the  book  was  long  in  winning  a  general  recognition 
of  its  merit. 

The  conventional  novel  must  belong  to  one  of  two 
classes.  In  the  one  case,  it  is  written  with  a  defi- 
nite plot,  more  or  less  intricate,  and  worked  out  with 
more  or  less  ingenuity.  It  is  meant,  for  a  time,  to 
puzzle  and  fascinate  the  reader  by  curious  compli- 
cations which  resolve  themselves  under  the  author's 
touch,  until  we  reach  what  is  sometimes  called  "  a 


TOLSTOI'S  "ANNA    KARENINA"         229 

logical  ending,"  either  happy  or  unhappy,  as  the 
case  may  be.  Such,  for  example,  is  Scott's  Guy 
Mannering,  or  Dickens's  Bleak  House,  or  Thack- 
eray's Henry  Esmond.  On  the  other  hand,  the  con- 
ventional novel  may  not  have  any  definite  plot;  yet 
none  the  less,  its  author  interests  us  by  the  skilful 
development  of  character,  and  in  so  doing  he  elimi- 
nates everything  which  will  not  throw  a  clear  light 
upon  the  motives  and  the  acts  of  the  principal  per- 
sonages. Trollope's  novels  are  of  this  sort,  and  so 
are  Maupassant's.  But  in  either  case,  the  conven- 
tional novel  is  constructed  with  conscious  art,  and 
bears  out  Michelangelo's  definition,  which  says  that 
"  art  is  the  purgation  of  superfluities." 

Now,  this  purgation  of  superfluities,  this  elimi- 
nation of  ever3'thing  that  is  not  strictly  essential, 
makes  a  work  of  fiction  compact,  symmetrical,  and, 
therefore,  interesting.  Nothing  is  told  that  does  not 
"play  up"  to  the  central  theme.  Everything  that 
is  irrelevant  is  excluded.  Nothing  happens  which 
docs  not  have  a  special  significance.  This  method 
of  writing  fiction  is  essentially  artistic,  but  it  is  not 
true  to  life.  Life  is  full  of  things  which  are  really 
meaningless.  It  is  replete  with  trivialities,  with  co- 
incidences which  have  no  importance,  with  episodes 
which  have  no  relation  to  the  whole,  which  we  scarcely 
notice  at  the  time,  and  which  we  almost  instantly 
forget. 

Almost  all  novelists  prefer  the  artistic  treatment. 


230    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Tolstoi  has  preferred,  in  Anna  Karcnina,  to  write  a 
book  wliicli  shall  show  us  not  merely  the  comedies 
and  tragedies  of  life,  but  the  inconsequence  of  much 
of  it.  Matthew  Arnold  saw  this  very  clearly,  and 
as  none  of  his  contemporaries  saw  it.     He  wrote: 

There  are  many  characters  in  Anna  KarMna — too  many, 
if  we  look  in  it  for  a  work  of  art  in  which  the  action  shall 
be  vigorously  one,  and  to  that  one  action  everything  shall 
converge.  People  appear  in  connection  with  the  two  main 
actions  whose  appearance  and  proceedings  do  not  in  the 
least  contribute  to  develop  them.  Incidents  are  multiplied 
which  we  expect  are  to  lead  to  something  important,  but 
which  do  not. 

Mr.  Arnold  very  justly  says  that  we  are  not  to 
take  the  book  as  work  of  art  at  all,  but  rather  as  a 
piece  of  life. 

A  piece  of  life  it  is.  The  author  has  not  invented  and 
combined  it.  He  has  seen  it.  It  has  all  happened  before  his 
inward  eye,  and  it  was  in  this  wise  that  it  happened.  The 
author  saw  it  all  happening  so — saw  it,  and  therefore  relates 
it;  and  what  his  novel  in  this  way  loses  in  art,  it  gains  in 
reality. 

This  is  admirable  criticism.  So  far  as  it  goes  it 
can  not  be  gainsaid.  Nevertheless,  it  does  not  tell 
us  that  this  disjointed  and  therefore  truly  realistic 
method,  is  far  from  being  original  with  Tolstoi.  In 
an  earlier  chapter  of  this  book  we  have  seen  that 
Alciphron  of  Athens  worked  out  the  same  method 
in  his  imaginary  letters,  which  do  not  narrate  a  story 


TOLSTOI'S  "ANNA    KARENINA  "         231 

from  beginning  to  end,  but  which  give  hints  of  many 
stories.  Alciphron,  hke  Tolstoi,  saw  life  just  as  it 
goes  on  around  us,  and  he  deliberately  rejected  art 
by  admitting  irrelevancies  and  superfluities.  In  our 
own  times,  Anatole  France  has  done  precisely  the 
same  thing.  His  novels  are  so  full  of  this  same 
looseness  of  construction  that  some  persons  scarcely 
think  them  to  be  novels  at  all,  and,  therefore,  read 
them  only  for  their  delicate  analysis  of  passion,  their 
irony,  and  their  vivacity. 

Another  thing  which  Matthew  Arnold  failed  to 
note  was  the  fact  that  in  Anna  Karcnina,  Tolstoi  did 
not  cut  loose  completely  from  the  conventional  and 
artistic  method.  He  has  given  us  in  the  story  two 
main  themes,  or  "  actions,"  which  have  no  real  rela- 
tion to  each  other.  The  first  of  these  has  to  do  with 
the  illicit  love  of  a  rich  and  handsome  type  of  the 
high-placed  Russian,  Count  Vronsky,  and  Anna 
Karcnina,  the  charming  wife  of  a  very  tiresome  and 
pedantic  bureaucrat.  This  theme  is  developed  quite 
in  the  traditional  way — very  much,  indeed,  as  Flau- 
bert might  have  developed  it.  So  far  as  these  two 
persons  are  concerned,  the  story  runs  on  after  the 
fashion  of  the  artistic  novelist.  It  is  good  drama 
from  beginning  to  end — Vronsky's  sudden  infatua- 
tion for  Anna  Karcnina,  with  whom  he  falls  in  love 
at  first  sight,  to  whom  at  once  he  makes  hot  love,  and 
in  whom  he  inspires  almost  instantaneously  a  mighty 
passion.      This   continues   until   Aniui   is   completely 


232    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

compromised,  so  that  at  last  she  leaves  her  husband 
and  takes  up  her  home  with  Vronsky,  whose  love  for 
her  is  boundless.  He  surrounds  her  witli  luxury. 
He  responds  to  her  every  wish.  He  lives  wholly  for 
her.  Yet  Anna  is  not  in  love  with  him  alone.  She 
has  a  deep  affection  for  her  son,  whom  she  has  left 
in  her  husband's  home.  Her  husband  is  willing  to 
divorce  her,  so  that  she  may  marry  Vronsky,  but 
naturally  he  will  do  so  only  on  condition  that  he 
retain  possession  of  the  child. 

Here  begins  the  conflict  between  the  passionate 
side  of  Anna's  nature,  which  responds  to  Vronsky, 
and  her  maternal  instinct,  which  rejects  the  thought 
of  giving  up  all  claim  to  her  little  son.  She  is  torn 
between  these  two  distinct  currents  of  emotion ;  and 
therefore  she  will  neither  accept  a  divorce,  which 
would  unite  her  legally  and  morally  with  Vronsky, 
nor  will  she,  on  the  other  hand,  give  up  Vronsky  and 
return  to  her  husband  and  her  son.  Passion  and 
maternal  instinct  are  evenly  balanced  in  her  nature, 
and  the  struggle  between  the  two  makes  her  at  last 
profoundly  morbid.  She  becomes  unjust,  suspicious, 
and  distrustful  of  her  lover.  She  broods  continually 
over  her  separation  from  her  son.  In  the  end,  yield- 
ing to  an  impulse  of  despair,  she  throws  herself  un- 
der a  passing  railway  train,  and  dies  horribly. 

All  this  part  of  the  novel  is  told  with  the  vivid- 
ness and  swift  movement  of  an  accomplished  fiction- 
writer.    The  action  moves  forward  steadily  and  with 


TOLSTOI'S  "ANNA    KARENINA  "         233 

no  interruption.  There  is,  however,  the  second 
theme,  or  "  action,"  of  which  I  have  spoken,  and 
which  is  the  autobiographical  portion  of  the  tale. 
It  has  to  do  fundamentally  with  the  mental  and 
spiritual  development  of  Constantine  Levin,  who  is 
no  other  than  Tolstoi  himself. 

Levin  is  represented  as  belonging  by  birth  to 
the  greater  world,  and  yet  by  inclination  living  re- 
mote from  cities  on  his  landed  property.  He  reads 
and  thinks.  He  is  conscientious,  and  busies  himself 
with  the  people  on  his  estates,  with  schools  and  agri- 
culture, and  with  the  social  improvement  of  the 
peasants.  He  falls  in  love  with  a  girl  named  Katla, 
the  daughter  of  a  prince ;  and  after  a  long  and  tedi- 
ous courtsliip,  wliich  is  full  of  uninteresting  details, 
he  wins  her  and  marries  her,  and  takes  her  home. 

Tills  second  "  action  "  of  the  novel  is  endured  by 
most  people  because  it  is  somewhat  interwoven  with 
the  affairs  of  Vronsky  and  Anna.  It  is  pcrliaps 
studied  carefully  b}'  those  who  wish  to  understand 
the  peculiar  views  and  personality  of  Tolstoi. 
Levin  goes  through  the  various  phases  which 
marked  Tolstoi's  own  career.  We  may,  indeed,  turn 
away  from  Levin  and  speak  directly  of  Tolstoi's 
spiritual  and  mental  evolution. 

Some  one  has  said  that  Tolstoi  spent  the  first  half 
of  his  life  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and  the  last 
half  of  his  life  in  doing  penance  for  that  pleasure. 
Many  have  a  notion  that  in  his  youth  he  was  not 


231    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

merely  gay,  but  dissipated.  This  is  inferred  from 
his  Confessions,  published  in  1885,  in  which  he  writes 
with  something  of  the  morbid  agony  of  a  mediaeval 
ascetic.  Because,  as  a  young  man,  he  was  an  officer 
in  the  army,  commanding  a  battery  at  Sebastopol, 
he  now  calls  himself  a  murderer.  Because  he  col- 
lected the  rent  from  his  tenants  and  spent  the 
money,  he  now  declares  himself  to  have  been  a  rob- 
ber. Because  he  made  careless  love  to  the  ladles  of 
the  court,  and  even  because  he  subsequently  married 
and  had  children,  he  now  thinks  of  himself  as  one 
whose  life  was  tainted  by  profligacy. 

This  view  may  appeal  to  his  immediate  disciples, 
but  most  sane  men  and  women  will  properly  regard 
it  as  morbid  nonsense.  The  fact  that  he  can  clothe 
these  strange  ideas  in  glowing  language,  and  hurl 
them  at  you  with  the  force  of  genuine  conviction, 
does  not  make  them  fundamentally  any  more  sound 
than  the  ravings  of  an  ordinary  man  who  has  no 
genius.  In  the  end,  he  proceeded  to  cast  aside  man- 
made  theology,  to  hate  the  social  structure  as  we 
know  It,  to  forswear  belief  in  human  law,  in  all  politi- 
cal institutions,  and  in  pretty  nearly  everything 
which  normal  human  beings  recognise  as  true.  The 
sum  and  substance  of  his  final  teaching  is  comprised 
in  a  rule  of  life  summed  up  in  five  commandments : 

Live  in  peace  and  allow  no  anger. 

Let  there  be  no  libertinage  and  no  divorce. 


TOLSTOI'S  "ANNA    KARENINA"         235 

Never  take  an  oath  of  service  to  any  one,  or  of  any  kind. 

Employ  no  force  against  an  evil-doer,  but  bear  the   wrong 
he  does  you  without  endeavouring  to  have  liim  punished. 

Give  up  all  feeling  of  nationality. 

This  curious  evolution  of  belief,  which,  if  it  should 
continue,  would  dissolve  society,  represents  the  drift 
of  what  we  find  in  the  story  of  Levin  in  Anna 
Karenina.  Levin  is  comfortably  off.  He  has 
estates  and  duties  and  friendships.  He  is  happily 
married.  He  has  children.  Nevertheless,  he  is  a 
self-tormentor,  sometimes  because  of  things  external, 
as  when  he  is  unreasonably  jealous  of  his  wife,  but 
often  because  of  the  restlessness  and  ceaseless  striv- 
ing of  a  morbid  mind.  The  story  is  full  of  aimless 
talk,  of  unmeaning  happenings,  of  intolerable  di- 
gressions. Did  the  novel  contain  only  the  second 
"  action,"  which  relates  to  Levin,  it  would  be  simply 
a  socialistic  tract.  It  becomes  a  masterpiece  only 
because  of  the  dramatic  and  brilliant  way  in  wliich 
the  tragedy  of  Anna  Karenina  herself  is  wrought 
out  by  a  master  hand. 

After  we  have  thrust  Levin  aside,  we  sec  the  real 
greatness  of  the  book.  Tolstoi  takes  us  into  the 
very  heart  of  the  ruling  classes  of  Russia.  He  draws 
for  us  a  score  of  portraits  to  the  very  life — Anna 
herself,  with  her  great  masses  of  hair,  her  half-closed 
yet  observant  eyes,  her  passionate  nature,  her  grace 
and   beauty.      There   is   Katla,   the   Innocent   young 


236    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

girl  wlio  flutters  over  the  attentions  of  attractive 
men,  and  feels  that  ordinary  compliments  have  deep 
significance.  There  is  Daria,  the  worn  and  anxious 
wife  of  Stiva  Arcadicvitch,  faded  while  still  young, 
anxious  for  her  children,  stinted  in  money,  badly 
dressed  and  with  the  bitter  certainty  that  her  hus- 
band no  longer  loves  her — yet  still  an  honest,  af- 
fectionate creature,  conscientious  to  the  last  degree 
even  while  she  doubts  whether  virtue  may  not  be, 
after  all,  a  sad  mistake.  Best,  perhaps,  is  Stiva  him- 
self, whom  we  meet  at  the  very  opening  of  the  book, 
worried  because  his  wife  has  discovered  his  fond- 
ness for  the  French  governess.  Stiva  is  a  wonder- 
fully well-drawn  human  being — selfish,  attractive, 
pleasure-loving,  susceptible,  a  jovial  companion, 
open-handed — the  sort  of  man  whom  everybody  likes 
and  whom  everybody  is  bound  to  help  along.  We 
see  him  very  vividly  in  this  single  paragraph : 

When  Stiva  Arcadicvitch  had  finished  his  toilet,  he  sprinkled 
himself  with  perfume,  drew  down  his  cuffs,  filled  his  pockets 
with  cigarettes,  his  letter-case,  match-box,  and  his  watch 
with  its  double  chain  and  charms;  and  then,  feeling  clean, 
well-scented,  fresh,  and  physically  well,  in  spite  of  his  domes- 
tic troubles,  he  strode  lightly  into  the  library,  where  his  coffee 
was  awaiting  him. 

Stiva  is  a  type  of  the  easy-going  man  of  the 
world,  wherever  found.  He  is  pleased  with  himself. 
Other  persons,  from  princes  and  nobles  down  to  the 
waiters  in  his  club,  take  pleasure  even  in  looking  at 


TOLSTOI'S  "ANNA    KARENINA  "         237 

him.  He  is  always  lunching  or  dining  in  restaurants 
on  oysters  and  capons  and  French  wines.  He  likes 
to  make  other  people  happy.  He  is  sorry  that  his 
wife  is  grieved.  He  loves  his  children.  He  loves 
also  to  flirt,  to  scatter  money — to  live,  in  short,  in  a 
state  of  physical  and  mental  well-being  "  in  a  land 
flowing  with  roubles  and  champagne."  Vronsky  is 
a  far  higher  t3'pe,  yet  he  is  less  interesting.  He  is 
a  man  of  great  capacity,  genuine  power,  of  real 
nobility  of  character.  When  he  falls  in  love  with 
Anna  Karenina,  it  is  genuine  love.  He  would  marry 
her  if  he  could.  As  it  is,  he  sacrifices  his  position 
at  the  imperial  court  for  her  sake,  and  devotes  him- 
self to  her  happiness.  After  her  tragic  death  he 
loves  no  more ;  and  the  book  leaves  him  in  command 
of  a  body  of  volunteers  whom  he  is  to  lead  against 
the  Turkish  troops  in  the  hope  that  a  bullet  will 
finish  his  existence. 

Altogether,  Anna  Karenina  is  a  great  canvas  upon 
which  there  have  been  painted,  not  impressionistic 
pictures,  but  a  scries  of  portraits  rendered  witli  the 
minute  fidelity  of  a  Meissonnier.  The  combination 
of  detail  puzzled  the  reading  public  for  a  while;  but 
as  has  been  well  said,  "  the  effect  was  at  last  recog- 
nised to  be  the  very  acme  of  throbbing,  breathing 
life  itself." 


ALPHOXSE  DAUDET'S  MASTER- 
PIECE 


XIII 

ALPHONSE    DAUDET'S    MASTERPIECE 

When  Alphonse  Daudet  wrote  SappJw,  in  1884,  he 
inscribed  it :  "  For  my  sons  when  they  are  twenty 
years  of  age."  Could  an  American  or  English  au- 
thor have  designed  a  book  like  this,  he  would  surely 
have  designed  it  for  readers  more  mature  than  boys 
of  twenty.  Yet  French  youths  are  in  some  things 
more  mature  than  English  and  American  boys 
of  twenty.  Their  temptations  are  different  and 
greater.  They  know  of  many  sides  of  life  which 
are,  perhaps,  never  revealed  at  all  to  the  majority 
of  English-speaking  men  and  women.  And,  there- 
fore, Daudet's  dedication  to  his  sons  must  be  re- 
garded as  no  pose,  but  as  evidence  of  a  sincerity 
and  seriousness  which  are,  indeed,  quite  plainly  felt 
throughout  the  entire  book. 

Written  by  one  of  the  few  genuine  humourists 
whom  France  has  yet  produced,  the  creator  of  the 
amusing  Tartarin  and  the  truly  comic  Delobelle,  in 
Sappho  there  is  not  a  trace  of  levity.  On  tiic  other 
hand,  there  is  nothing  cynical.  A  great  gulf  here 
separates  Daudtt  from  IMaupassant.  Compare  the 
lattcr's  novel  Bel  Ami  with  6'ap2>ho,  and  note  how 


242    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

differently  each  analyst  looks  on  life.  Maupassant 
sees  only  what  is  base  or  vile  or  venal.  His  men  and 
women  are,  almost  without  exception,  cowards  or 
sharpers  or  dupes  or  drabs.  The  psychology  of 
every  type  he  draws  is  pitilessly  true,  yet  the  aggre- 
gation of  them  is  lamentably  false.  We  do  not  live 
in  such  a  world  as  Maupassant  delineates;  for  no 
such  world  could  last  a  year. 

But  Daudet  sees  life  clearly,  and  he  sees  it  as  a 
whole — the  good,  the  bad,  the  mediocre,  the  noble, 
and  the  weak.  To  him  its  very  vices  are  often  only 
a  perversion  of  its  virtues.  Its  goodness  shines  out 
clear  and  beautiful  amid  the  murk  of  its  depravity. 
And  nowhere  do  we  feel  this  more  acutely  than  in 
SappJio — a  story  written  with  perfect  purity  of  pur- 
pose, even  though  it  leads  us  through  the  depths  of 
degradation.  It  is  profoundly  touching — a  moral 
tragedy — the  more  impressive  in  that  it  is  simply 
told,  with  none  of  the  pauses  for  that  sort  of  preach- 
ing which  Thackeray,  for  instance,  loved  too  well. 
There  is  not  a  word  that  can  offend  the  most  cen- 
sorious. Its  lesson  is  writ  large  in  the  mere  narra- 
tion of  the  story;  yet  its  severe  simplicity  is  the 
product  of  consummate  art,  revealing  all  the  subtle 
genius  of  a  master. 

Some  have  said  that  in  this  book  is  to  be  found 
a  key  to  all  the  mysteries  of  woman's  nature;  that 
every  phase  of  the  Eternal  Feminine  is  here  revealed ; 
and  that  Sappho  is,  therefore,  the  clue  to  woman- 


ALPHOXSE    DAUDET  243 

hood,  given  in  a  single  book.  This  assertion  I  be- 
lieve to  be  absolutely  true,  yet  not  quite  in  the  way 
that  critics  have  intended  it.  They  would  have  us 
think  that  Daudet  has  drawn  for  us  a  dozen  or  more 
women,  each  representing  some  especial  t^^pe  of  char- 
acter. Thus,  the  pure  young  girl  is  shown  to  us  in 
the  charming  figure  of  Irene  Bouchereau,  whom  the 
distracted  hero  of  the  novel  really  loves  and  whom 
he  would  marry  were  it  not  for  the  strangely  evil  fas- 
cination which  Sappho  exerts  upon  him  in  his  own 
despite.  The  cold,  patrician  woman  who  bears  her 
wrongs  in  uncomplaining  silence  is  drawn  in  ]Mme. 
de  Potter,  the  great  musician's  wife,  neglected  by 
him  for  the  vulgar,  insolent  circus-woman  Rosa,  who 
treats  him  like  a  dog,  yet  holds  him  through  long- 
continued  habit.  And  there  is  Mme.  Hcttema,  fat, 
lazy,  dull,  and  desiring,  with  her  burly  husband,  only 
to  be  sated  with  the  grossest  of  animal  comforts — the 
pair  being  at  their  best  mere  human  cattle — "  com- 
panions of  stall  and  litter."  Ilettema  himself  sums 
up  their  swinish  ideal  of  happiness: 

"  I  come  home  muddy  and  wet  nnd  worried,  with  nil  the 
weight  of  Paris  on  my  hack,  to  find  ii  good  fire,  u  hright 
lamp,  a  savoury  soup,  and  under  the  tahle  a  pair  of  wooden 
shoes  stuffed  with  straw.  Then,  after  I  have  eaten  plenty 
of  cahhape  and  sausages  and  a  piece  of  GrnyJre,  kept  fresh 
under  a  cloth,  and  have  emptied  a  hottle  of  licpior,  isn't  it 
fine  to  draw  my  armchair  to  the  fireside,  light  a  pipe  and 
drink  my  coffee  witli  a  thimhicful  of  hrandy  in  it;  and  then, 
seated  opposite  each  other,   to  indulge  in   forty  winks  while 


241    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

the  hoar-frost  is  making  patterns  on  the  windows  outside? 
Afterward,  when  the  wife  clears  everything  away,  turns  down 
the  bed,  gets  the  hot  bottle  out,  and  has  warmed  a  place,  I 
turn  in  and  feel  as  cosy  as  if  I  had  crept  bodily  into  the 
straw  of  my  wooden  shoes." 


The  pathetic  figure  of  Alice  Dorc,  the  poor  little 
Parisian  waif,  picked  up  by  a  rich  and  careless  syba- 
rite amid  the  motley  crowd  of  a  skating-rink  in  order 
that  she  may  satisfy  a  moment's  whim — how  vividly 
she  stands  out  in  the  few  pages  that  tell  her  piteous 
story!     A  quiet,  mouselike  little  creature,  so  gentle 
and  by  nature  so  refined,  she  is  at  heart  still  virginal, 
though  in  all  her  life  she  has  never  known  respect, 
or  any  of  that  deference  which  some  men  show  to 
every  woman.    Her  temporary  possessor,  Dechelette, 
bears  her  away  to  his  palace  of  a  home,  where  he 
treats  her  with  the  tenderness  of  a  devoted  lover. 
She  forgets  the  noise,  the  oaths,  the  coarse  jests,  and 
the  meretricious  strife  that  have  surrounded  her ;  and 
amid  the  palms  and  flowers  and  luxury  of  her  new- 
abode,  finds  what  to  her  is  heaven.     It  is  but  for  a 
few  days.     She  knows  she  must  return  to  the  old 
life,  and  that  Dechelette  will  think  of  her  no  more. 
Then  the  child,  after  a  short  and  piteous  plea  that 
she  may  stay,  grows  silent,  dries  her  tears,  and  flings 
herself  to  death  from  an  open  window.     She  is  the 
woman  who  was  born  for  goodness,  but  whom  Fate 
condemned  to  a  life  of  shame  and  outrage.     When 
she  came  to  know  that  there  was  something  better  in 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET  245 

the  world,  she  died  because  she  would  not  go  back 
to  the  horror  of  her  old  existence. 

Then  there  are  other  figures  no  less  sharpl}'  and 
clearly  drawn,  and  each  as  sharply  differentiated. 
There  is  Divonne,  the  peasant  woman,  married  to 
a  fatuous  scion  of  a  good  old  family,  of  whom  she 
makes  a  man  by  her  strong  sense,  her  patience,  and 
her  tact.  Divonne  is  in  refreshing  contrast  to  the 
enervated  and  enervating  Parisiennc.  Her  physical 
perfection,  graceful  yet  strong;  her  rustic  beauty, 
her  love  of  home,  her  cleanly  mind,  and  her  wifely 
faithfulness,  are  all  as  wholesome  as  mountain  air, 
giving  us  a  sort  of  moral  tonic  that  restores  our 
faith  in  righteousness.  And,  finally,  there  is  Sappho 
herself,  who  is  the  incarnation  of  light  love  and  of 
the  ruin  which  light  love  works  in  man. 

Taking  these  vital  figures,  together  with  some 
minor  ones  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  mention  in  de- 
tail, this  great  novel  of  Daudet  is  quite  truly  the 
condensation  of  all  experience,  the  complete  psychol- 
ogy of  what,  with  unconscious  absurdity,  is  often 
called  "  the  weaker  sex."  Yet,  as  I  shall  presently 
attempt  to  show,  this  view  of  it,  while  it  is  entirely 
correct,  takes  no  account  of  the  most  curious  fact 
of  all. 

Sappho  is  the  nickname  given  to  Fanny  T.egrand, 
the  daughter  of  a  full-blooded,  lifiuorish  old  cal)inan 
and  of  a  mother  whom  she  can  not  recall.  She  has 
grown  up  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  learning  everything 


2lS    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

that  Paris  has  to  teach  such  girls  as  this.  She  has 
been  an  artist's  model ;  she  knows  the  life  of  the  stu- 
dios; and  she  has  loved,  sometimes  with  terrible  in- 
tensity, men  of  the  brilliant  Bohemia  by  the  Seine. 
From  each  one — poet  or  painter,  musician  or  sculp- 
tor— she  has  picked  up  accomplishments.  Each  of 
her  liaisons  has  left  its  trace  upon  her  mind.  Now 
she  is  well  past  thirty — still  graceful,  charming,  and 
ripe  for  that  last  great  love  which  Balzac  says  can 
be  satisfied  in  woman  only  by  the  first  fresh  love  of 
man. 

At  a  studio  entertainment  she  meets  a  handsome 
young  follow  from  the  country — Jean  Gaussin — who 
is  in  Paris,  preparing  to  pass  the  examinations  for 
a  place  in  the  consular  service.  Fanny  flings  her- 
self upon  him  with  an  abandonment  and  an  intensity 
of  passion  that  surprise  him.  He  thinks  that  she  is 
but  the  acquaintance  of  an  evening;  but  he  soon 
finds  that  he  can  not  shake  her  off.  She  sits  waiting 
outside  his  door  night  after  night.  She  writes  him 
letters,  touching  in  their  humility  and  devotion.  At 
last,  she  nurses  him  through  a  fever,  and  a  bond  be- 
tween them  is  established.  She  forgets  that  she  has 
ever  loved  before.  This  creature  of  the  studios  dis- 
plays the  tenderness,  the  self-sacrifice,  and  the  ar- 
dent fondness  of  one  who  for  the  first  time  feels  the 
breath  of  passion.  It  is  understood  between  them 
that  some  day  this  must  end;  but  Jean  can  never 
shake  her  off.    She  has  bound  him  fast  with  the  silken 


ALPHONSE    DxVUDET  247 

cords  of  intimacy — of  that  strange  habitude  of  con- 
tinued association  of  which  Pctronius  has  tersely 
said:  Antiquus  amor  cancer  est. 

Still,  Jean  does  not  in  his  heart  of  hearts  feel  any 
ennobling  love  for  her.  He  yields  rather  to  her 
strange  subtleties  of  corruption,  even  while  he  sees, 
at  times,  the  woman  as  she  really  is — one  who  con- 
ceals beneath  her  often  radiant  charm  the  beginnings 
of  complete  putrescence.  He  can  hear,  in  her  fre- 
quent bursts  of  rage,  the  raucous  voice  and  the  foul 
speech  of  the  common  courtesan.  He  can  see,  in  the 
hardening  lines  of  her  face,  in  her  broken  tooth,  in 
her  thinning  hair,  the  approach  of  an  unlovely  age. 
And  he  knows  too  well  that  she  has  been  the  play- 
thing of  others,  whose  tricks  of  speech  and  manner, 
as  well  as  their  opinions  and  their  tastes,  he  can 
detect  in  her.  From  one  lover  she  had  got  her  pref- 
erence for  a  special  brand  of  cigarette ;  from  a 
second,  a  sculptor,  she  had  acquired  the  habit  of 
sticking  out  her  thumb  "  as  if  to  mould  or  fashion 
something  " ;  from  a  third  she  had  learned  the  trick 
of  clipping  her  words;  still  another  had  taught  her 
an  arrogant,  scornful  Intonation.  She  was,  indeed, 
a  human  phonographic  record,  upon  which  a  thou- 
sand scratches  blurred  and  altered  the  tone  pro- 
duced. 

Again  and  again  Jean  seeks  to  break  the  fetters 
that  grow  every  day  more  galling;  but  Sappho  has 
possessed  his  whole  nature.     When  he   revisits  his 


2i8    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

country  home,  it  seems  changed  and  dull.  Its  wholc- 
somcness  makes  no  appeal  to  him.  He  falls  in  love 
with  a  beautiful  young  girl,  and  hopes  that  mar- 
riage will  destroy  the  sway  of  Sappho.  None  the 
less,  in  the  end,  he  abandons  home,  breaks  off  his 
intended  marriage,  and  becomes  an  outcast.  Sappho 
has  played  upon  his  jealousy,  and  he  plans  to  go 
with  her  to  South  America,  there,  in  a  strange  land, 
to  h-ave  her  to  himself. 

But  the  woman  herself  shrinks  from  this  final  step. 
She  knows  that  she  will  soon  be  old,  and  that  all  her 
lures  and  wiles  will  fail  to  hold  him.  And  so,  at  the 
seaport  whither  he  has  gone  to  meet  her,  he  receives 
from  her  a  letter  of  farewell.  She  has  blasted  his 
career,  yet  she  must  protect  herself.     She  writes: 

Five  years  ago,  in  the  happy  days,  a  sign  from  you  would 
have  caused  me  to  follow  you  to  the  other  end  of  the  world; 
for  you  can  not  deny  that  I  loved  you  passionately.  I  have 
given  you  all  that  I  had,  and  when  it  became  necessary 
to  part  from  you,  I  suffered  as  I  never  did  for  any  man 
before.  But  such  a  love  wears  out.  To  know  you  are  so 
handsome,  so  young,  would  make  me  tremble — always  so  many 
things  to  guard.  Now  I  can  not.  You  have  made  me  live 
too  much,  made  me  suffer  too  much.  I  am  exhausted — 
you  are  free;  you  will  never  hear  me  spoken  of  again. 
Farewell.    One  kiss,  the  last,  on  the  neck,  my  own. 

Superficially,  in  spite  of  all  its  marvellous  touches 
and  the  supreme  artistry  with  which  it  is  told,  this 
story  may  appear  to  be  only  a  study  of  what  the 
French  describe  as  la  femme  collante.     The  expres- 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET  2t9 

sion  is  one  that  has  no  equivalent  in  English ;  and 
haplj,  outside  of  France,  there  is  seldom  any  need  to 
use  it.  The  femme  collante  is  the  woman  who  glues 
herself  to  one  man  or  another,  who  lives  wholly  in 
her  emotions,  and  who  sacrifices  to  them  everything 
— all  self-control,  all  traces  of  reserve,  and  even  tran- 
quil happiness ;  for,  if  she  can  not  be  emotionally 
happy,  she  prefers  to  be  emotionally  miserable.  One 
of  the  characters  in  Sappho  describes  the  type  in 
speaking  of  Fanny  Legrand: 

"Ah,  catch  her  killing  herself!  She  is  too  fond  of  love, 
and  will  burn  down  to  the  end,  down  to  the  very  socket.  She 
is  like  the  tribe  of  young  comedy  actors,  who  never  change 
their  class  of  characters,  who  die  without  teeth  or  eyebrows, 
but  are  young  lovers  to  the  very  last." 

The  gradually  strengthening  hold,  the  almost  im- 
perceptible deepening  of  the  taint  which  Fanny  Le- 
grand displays  as  her  intimacy  with  Jean  increases 
month  by  month,  are  set  forth  with  extraordinary 
vividness  in  the  following  passage: 

There  was  greater  freedom  of  manner  and  expression,  n 
consciousness  of  her  power,  strange  confidences  unsought  by 
him  concerning  her  past  life,  her  old  debaucheries  and 
follies.  She  did  not  dcjjrive  herself  of  smoking  now;  she 
rolled,  and  in  her  fmgcrs,  put  down  on  the  furniture,  the 
eternal  cigarettes  which  help  to  pass  the  tmconvenlional 
woman's  day;  and  in  Ikt  conversation  she  let  fall  her  views 
of  life,  the  infamy  of  men,  the  Irearbery  of  women, —  the 
most  cynical  theories  on  all  subjects.    Even  iier  eyes  assumed 


250    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

n  different  expression,  dimmed  by  a  film  of  moisture  throngh 
■which  flashed  a  libertine  laugh. 

And  the  intimacy  of  their  affection  also  changed.  At  first 
restrained  by  the  youth  of  her  lover,  of  which  she  respected 
the  first  illusions,  the  woman  having  seen  the  effect  on  the 
man,  of  her  roughly  disclosed,  debauched  past — did  not  now 
trouble  herself  to  restrain  the  imwholcsome  fever  with  which 
she  had  infected  him.  So  the  wayward  caresses  long  restrained, 
all  the  delirious  words  which  her  closed  teeth  had  shut  back — 
she  let  loose  now,  showed  herself  in  her  true  colours,  in  all  the 
nakedness  of  the  amorous  and  practised  courtesan,  in  all  the 
horrible  glory  of  Sappho! 

Yet  this  book  of  Daudet  is  something  infinitely 
greater  in  its  importance  than  a  study  of  collage.  I 
have  already  quoted  the  opinion  of  those  who  call  the 
novel  a  comprehensive  study  of  woman,  because  of 
tlie  great  range  of  feminine  types  which  it  contains. 
To  my  mind,  this  is  not  giving  it  all  the  praise  which 
it  deserves.  It  is  not  in  the  multiplicity  of  types 
which  Daudet  has  collected  that  he  has  depicted  fem- 
ininity. He  has  done  what  is  far  more  remarkable 
than  that.  In  the  single  character  of  Fanny  Le- 
grand  herself,  he  shows  us  womanhood,  complete — 
crowned  and  glorious  upon  the  heights  to  which  it 
often  soars,  and  again,  bedraggled  and  befouled,  in 
those  abysses  which  are  deeper  than  any  into  which 
man  ever  falls. 

In  the  book  it  is  said  of  Fanny  Lcgrand  that  she 
represents  toute  la  lyre;  and  the  phrase  has  refer- 
ence only  to  her  faults  and  vices.  It  might  more 
truly  refer  to  both  her  virtues  and  her  vices,  for  in 


ALPHOXSE    DAUDET  251 

reality  she  represents  the  entire  gamut  of  those  traits 
and  attributes  which  go  to  make  up  the  complex 
character  of  woman  in  her  full  development.  Fanny- 
possesses  charm,  quick  wit,  and  great  intelligence, 
surpassing  in  its  rapier-like  flash  and  penetration 
the  intelligence  of  man.  She  has  the  tenderness  and 
material  sweetness  which  are  also  woman's,  as  when 
she  nurses  Jean  and  cares  for  the  strange  little  child, 
the  son  of  a  former  lover.  She  is  capable  of  supreme 
self-sacrifice.  She  can  endure  poverty  and  distasteful 
toil  for  the  sake  of  Jean. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  all  these  nobler  traits  are 
displayed  only  to  those  for  whom  she  cares.  She 
can  be  brutally  unjust  and  hideously  insulting  to  a 
discarded  lover.  One  feels  the  shock  precisely  as 
Jean  felt  it  when  Fanny,  at  one  of  their  first  meet- 
ings, reveals  the  dual  quality  of  her  nature.  Slic 
had  been  so  gentle,  so  womanly,  and  so  submissive 
that  he  is  charmed  into  a  deHcious  dream.  Then 
she  is  called  suddenly  to  an  outer  room  into  which 
a  former  lover  has  just  forced  his  way.  Jean  hears 
the  sound  of  a  fierce  quarrel.  "A  man's  voice,  irri- 
table at  first,  and  then  imploring,  in  which  the  out- 
bursts were  choked  with  emotion  and  pleading,  alter- 
nated with  another  voice  which  he  did  not  imnudiately 
recognise — hard  and  hoarse,  full  of  Iwitred  and  vile 
epithets,  assailing  his  cars  like  a  brawl  In  a  low  tav- 
ern." Fanny  returns,  out  of  breath,  and  twisting 
her  flowing  huir  with  a  movement  full  of  grace. 


252    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

*'  What  a  fool  a  man  is  who  cries !  "  she  says. 
Daudct's  comment  is  illuminating: 


Jean  thought  her  cruel.  He  had  not  yet  learned  that 
a  woman  who  loves  has  no  pity  except  for  her  love.  All 
her  feelings  of  charity,  kindness,  good-nature,  and  pity,  and 
devotion,  are  concentrated  in  one  individual  and  in  one 
alone.  .  .  .  He  felt  a  great  disgust,  when,  after  his  niglit 
of  love,  he  had  heard  the  sobs  of  tlie  deceived  lover  mingling 
with  her  washerwoman's  oaths. 


Fanny  Legrand,  indeed,  has  no  faith  in  her  own 
sex,  and  she  thinks  that  all  other  women  are  like 
herself.  Even  when  she  loves  Jean  most  intensely, 
she  lies  to  him  because  of  a  stray  sentiment  which 
she  cherishes  for  a  convict.  At  the  last  supreme 
crisis  she  thinks  of  self;  and,  having  ruined  Jean, 
she  deserts  him  and  makes  for  herself  another  home 
in  which  she  will  be  adored  without  the  trouble  of 
adoring  in  her  turn.  Here  Daudet  has  revealed  the 
extraordinary  inconsistency  and  contradiction  which 
enter  into  a  woman's  passion — its  lack  of  logic,  its 
unreasonableness,  its  fickleness,  and  its  heats  which 
come  and  go  like  lightning-ilashes  shuddering  across 
a  summer  sky. 

To  have  wrought  this  out  in  the  drawing  of  a 
single  character  makes  the  book  a  memorable  achieve- 
ment. It  will  endure  beyond  the  life  of  all  its  au- 
thor's other  books.  It  will,  I  tlilnk,  remain  forever 
one  of  the  great  books  of  the  world ;  for  it  embodies 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET  253 

everlasting  truth.  As  ]\Ir.  Sherard  says,  it  is  a  book 
which  should  be  written  in  Latin,  or,  as  an  equiva- 
lent, carved  on  imperishable  bronze  or  marble ;  "  for, 
when  the  French  language  may  be  a  forgotten 
tongue,  and  when  all  our  paper  shall  have  crumbled 
into  dust,  there  will  always  be  the  love  of  man  and 
woman."  And  no  other  book  has  told  so  subtly,  and 
with  such  impressive  force,  the  power  of  that  love 
for  evil  and  for  good,  and  the  mighty  hold  it  has 
upon  the  lives  and  souls  of  those  who  let  it  sway 
them  as  it  will. 


THE  DETECTIVE   STORYi 


XIV 

THE    DETECTIVE    STORY 

SupEECiLiors  persons  who  profess  to  have  a  high  re- 
gard for  the  dignity  of  "  literature  "  are  loath  to 
admit  that  detective  stories  belong  to  the  category 
of  serious  writing.  They  will  make  an  exception  in 
the  case  of  certain  tales  by  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  but  in 
general  they  would  cast  narratives  of  this  sort  down 
from  the  upper  ranges  of  fine  fiction.  They  do  this 
because,  in  the  first  place,  they  think  that  the  detect- 
ive story  makes  a  vulgar  appeal  through  its  exploi- 
tation of  crime.  In  the  second  place,  and  with  some 
reason,  they  despise  detective  stories  because  most 
of  them  are  poor,  cheap  things.  Just  at  present 
there  is  a  great  popular  demand  for  them ;  and  in 
response  to  this  demand  a  flood  of  crude,  ill-written, 
sensational  tales  comes  pouring  from  the  presses  of 
the  day.  But  a  detective  story  composed  by  a  man 
of  talent,  not  to  say  of  genius,  is  quite  as  worthy  of 
admiration  as  any  other  form  of  novel.  In  truth, 
its  interest  does  not  really  lie  in  the  crime  whicli  gives 
the  writer  a  sort  of  starting  point.  In  many  of  those 
stories  the  crime  has  occurred  before  the  tale  begins ; 
and  frequently  it  happens,  as  it  were,  ofF  the  stage, 
in  accordance  with  the  traditional  precept  of  Horace. 
The  real  interest  of  a  fine  detective  story  is  very 

851 


258    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

largely  an  intellectual  interest.  Here  we  see  the  con- 
flict of  one  acutely  analytical  mind  with  some  other 
mind  which  is  scarcely  less  acute  and  analytical.  It 
is  a  battle  of  wits,  a  mental  duel,  involving  close  logic, 
a  certain  amount  of  applied  psychology,  and  also  a 
high  degree  of  daring  on  the  part  both  of  the  crim- 
inal and  of  the  man  who  hunts  him  down.  Here  is 
nothing  in  itself  "  sensational "  in  the  popular  ac- 
ceptance of  that  word. 

The  reasoning,  for  instance,  in  Poe's  story  of  The 
Purloined  Letter  would  excite  the  admiration  of  a 
mathematician  or  of  a  student  of  metaphysics.  In 
the  same  author's  most  famous  story.  The  Murders 
in  the  Rue  Morgue,  there  are  to  be  sure  some  details 
that  are  terrible  to  read — hideous  traces  of  a  mon- 
strous crime;  but  these  details  are  necessary.  The 
perpetrator  of  the  crime  is  not  a  human  being,  but  an 
orang-outang,  and  this  fact  compels  a  description  of 
the  unhuman  and  frightful  manner  in  which  the  mur- 
ders were  committed.  But  in  general,  not  only  in 
Poe,  but  in  Ponson  du  Terrail  and  Gaboriau  and 
Boisgobey  and  Conan  Doyle,  the  evil  deed  which  is 
the  cause  of  the  whole  action  is  usually  passed  over 
lightly,  and  very  often  it  is  not  a  crime  of  vio- 
lence. Indeed,  the  matter  may  turn  out  to  be  no 
crime  at  all,  but  simply  a  mysterious  happening, 
which  the  quick-witted,  subtle  hero  is  called  in  to 
solve,  as  in  Doyle's  The  Man  with  the  Twisted  Lip, 
or  the  same  author's  slighter  tale,  A  Case  of  Identity, 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  259 

Therefore,  when  we  speak  of  the  detective  story, 
and  regard  it  seriously,  we  do  not  mean  the  penny- 
dreadfuls,  the  dime-novels,  and  the  books  which  are 
hastily  thrown  together  by  some  hack-writer  of  the 
"  Nick  Carter  "  school,  but  the  skilfully  planned  work 
of  one  who  can  construct  and  work  out  a  complicated 
problem,  definitely  and  convincingly.  It  must  not  be 
too  complex ;  for  here,  as  in  all  art,  simplicity  is  the 
soul  of  genius.  The  story  must  appeal  to  our  love 
of  the  mysterious,  and  it  must  be  characterised  by 
ingenuity,  without  transcending  in  the  least  the  limits 
of  the  probable. 

The  origin  of  the  detective  story  is  to  be  found  in^ 
^Voltaire's  clever  romance,  Zadig,  which  he  wrote 
under  peculiar  circumstances.  He  had  fallen  out  of 
favour  with  the  French  court,  because  he  had  inti- 
' mated  that  some  of  the  members  of  the  royal  circle 
were  guilty  of  cheating  at  cards.  This  brought  upon 
him  the  keen  displeasure  of  the  queen.  He  feared 
lest  at  any  moment  he  nu'ght  be  arrested  and  impris- 
oned in  the  Bastille.  Within  the  hour,  almost,  he 
had  his  carriage  prepared,  and  hurried  away  at  half- 
past  one  in  the  morning.  Arriving  at  a  little  wayside 
inn,  he  sent  a  letter  to  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  beg- 
ging her  to  hide  him  in  her  chateau  until  he  had  been 
pardoned.  For  a  month  he  lived  in  two  rooms,  which 
she  provided  for  him,  iiehind  barred  shutters,  and 
witK  candles  burning  night  and  day. 

There  Voltaire  wrote  and  wrote  continually  in  his 


260    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

cramped  hand,  while  his  valet  copied  the  sheets  which 
his  master  kept  tossing  upon  the  floor  with  the  ink 
still  wet  upon  them.  At  two  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
Voltaire  would  go  softly  down  to  where  the  duchess 
was  awaiting  him,  and  eat  a  little  supper  in  her  pres- 
ence, amusing  her  by  his  brilliant  talk.  Then  he 
would  creep  back  to  his  prison,  and  after  a  brief  in- 
terval of  sleep,  would  once  more  fall  to  writing.  It 
was  under  these  strange  circumstances  that  he  com- 
posed the  miniature  masterpiece  of  romance  which  he 
called  Zadig.  Zadig,  of  course,  is  not  a  detective 
story.  It  is  an  oriental  tale,  and  its  hero,  Zadig,  is 
,a  marvellous  philosopher  and  acute  observer.  One 
passage  in  the  story  tells  how  he  described  to  the 
Persian  king's  attendants  a  horse  and  a  dog  which 
had  been  lost,  and  which  Zadig  had  never  seen.  Nev- 
ertheless, he  was  able  by  his  powers  of  observation, 
and  from  certain  indications,  not  only  to  describe 
the  dog — its  sex,  size,  and  condition — but  to  tell  cor- 
rectly what  sort  of  a  bit  was  in  the  horse's  mouth, 
and  with  what  sort  of  shoes  the  animal  had  been 
shod. 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  suggestion  of  thi^ 
/story,  Le  Chien  et  Le  Cheval,  was  not  original  with\ 
/   Voltaire.     The  tale  is  found  in  a  slightly  different  \ 
/    form  in  De  Mailly's  Voyage  et  Aventures  des  Trois  \ 
I     Princes  de  Sarendip,   which  appeared  in   1719,  or   1 
\  twenty-eight  years  before  Zadig  was  writtec^ijand  J 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  261 

was  even  rendered  into  English  twenty-four  years 
before  Voltaire  conveyed  it.  But  careful  investiga- 
tion has  shown  that  De  Mailly  himself  was  not  the 
originator.  His  story  professes  to  have  been  trans- 
lated from  the  Persian,  but  was,  in  fact,  taken  from 
an  obscure  Italian  writer,  Cristoforo  Armcno,  whose 
book  was  printed  in  Venice  in  1^57^  and  translated 
into  French  as  early  as  1610.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  episode  with  which  we  are  all  familiar  in  Vol- 
taire has  an  oriental  ancestry  which  can  be  traced 
through  Arabic,  Turkish,  and  Persian  literature, 
and  Talmudic  Hebrew,  until  the  clue  is  lost  in  the 
mists  of  a  remote  past.^ 

In  all  these  tales  occurs  the  same  kind  of  deduct- 
ive reasoning  which  plays  so  great  a  part  in  the 
best  detective  stories  of  modern  times.  Just  as 
Voltaire  derived  his  hint  from  De  Mailly,  so  Poe, 
who  was  steeped  in  French  literature,  must  have 
drawn  from  Voltaire  the  same  idea  which  he  so  bril- 
liantly developed  in  his  story,  The  Purloined  Let- 
ter. It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  the  scene  of 
all  three  of  Poe's  most  famous  detective  talcs — The 
Murders  in  the  Rue  Morfrne,  The  Purloined  Letter^ 
and  The  Mystery  of  Marie  Itogct — is  laid  in  France. 

1  Sec  an  intcrrslinp  paper  by  Mr.  I.con  Frnscr  rntillcd 
"A  Study  in  IJIcr.iry  Grnrnlopy,"  puhlislicd  in  Modern 
Langxuu/e  Sotes  under  dute  of  Dcceniljcr,  11)00.  (Vol.  xxi. 
pp.  245-217.) 


262    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

As  has  been  said  elsewhere  in  this  book,  no  one 
has  surpassed  the  ingenuity  of  Poe  in  the  construc- 
tion of  these  stories.  It  was  noted,  however,  that 
one's  admiration  ends  with  the  matter  of  his  con- 
structivencss  and  reasoning,  and  I  ventured  to  say 
that  the  defect  in  all  these  tales  lies  in  the  fact  that 
their  author  could  not  create  a  hving,  breathing 
character.  His  personages  are  nothing  but  abstrac- 
tions. He  moves  them  about  like  chessmen  on  a 
board,  and  we  are  interested,  not  in  them,  but  in  the 
problem  with  which  they  have  to  do. 

In  order  that  the  detective  story  should  be  some- 
thing more  than  mathematics  applied  to  fiction — 
or,  perhaps,  fiction  applied  to  mathematics — it  was 
necessary  that  what  Poe  did  should  be  combined 
with  a  sympathetic  understanding  of  human  nature. 
This  combination  was  effected — imperfectly,  to  be 
sure,  but  still  with  great  abihty — by  Emile  Gabo- 
riau  in  the  best  of  his  detective  stories,  M.  Lecoq. 

Gaboriau  was  a  journalist  before  he  turned  a 
novelist;  and  as  a  journalist  he  came  to  be  inter- 
ested in  the  problems  with  which  the  police  of  Paris 
had  to  deal.  This  was  under  the  Second  Empire, 
when  Napoleon  HI.,  for  his  own  personal  safety, 
had  established  a  marvellously  elaborate  system  of 
espionage.  The  police  records  contained  the  daily 
history  of  almost  every  human  being  within  the 
boundaries  of  France.  Enrolled  in  the  organisation 
were  not  merely  the  usual  police,  but  a  host  of  un- 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  263 

known  spies.  These  might  apparently  be  shop- 
keepers, janitors,  labourers,  or  whatever  else  seemed 
best ;  but  apart  from  their  ordinary  occupations, 
they  were  the  eyes  and  ears  of  the  men  who  con- 
trolled them  all  at  the  central  prefecture  of  police 
or  the  mysterious  Black  Room  in  the  Tuileries,  and 
to  whom  they  reported  daily.  Every  foreigner, 
even  though  he  were  known  to  be  merel}'  a  traveller 
for  pleasure,  was  watched,  and  everj'thing  that  he 
did  was  carefully  recorded.  An  inquiry  addressed 
to  the  minister  of  police  could  bring  from  him  at 
once  complete  particulars  concerning  almost  any 
man  or  woman — where  they  had  been  at  a  given 
time,  who  were  their  friends,  how  they  amused  them- 
selves, and  a  great  deal  more  besides.  All  this  in- 
formation might  not  be  used,  and  much  of  it  was 
never  used,  yet  scarcely  anything  was  unknown  to 
the  men  who  cast  this  great  spider's  web  over 
France,  and  who  could  from  their  files  produce  facts 
which,  if  generally  known,  would  have  wrecked  fam- 
ilies, destroyed  reputations,  and  laid  bare  the  dark 
secrets  of  man^'  a  life  that  seemed  wholly  spotless. 
Gaboriau  became  fascinated  by  the  thorough- 
ness and  precision  of  this  remarkable  system.  He 
^studied  it  in  all  its  phases,  and  with  the  greatest 
icarc.  As  a  result  of  this  study,  he  wrote  the  nov- 
Vels  which,  with  all  their  jjlcini.shes,  are  still  read 
tagerly  in  many  countries  and  in  many  languages. 
\.^f    these    novels,    the    one    best    constructed    and^ 


261    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

most  deserving  of  fame  is  that  entitled  M.  Lccoq, 
which  he  pubhshed  in  1869,  not  many  years  before 
his  death.  In  it  is  seen  an  ingenuity  equal  to  that 
of  Poe,  while  there  is  also  shown  a  fair  success  in 
sketching  character.  Moreover,  the  author  has  in- 
troduced a  new  type  of  deductive  reasoner  which 
suggested  to  Conan  Doyle  the  interesting  Mycroft 
Holmes,  brother  of  Sherlock  Holmes,  and  that  great 
detective's  superior  in  the  subtlety  of  his  intellec- 
tual processes. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  story  of  M.  Lecoq 
opens  with  the  commission  of  a  crime,  which,  on 
the  face  of  it,  was  not  mysterious,  but  was  appar- 
ently just  one  of  those  everyday  tragedies  that 
take  place  in  tiie  lowest  quarters  of  Paris.  Several 
detectives  are  making  their  rounds  in  the  outskirts 
of  the  city,  on  a  winter  night,  when  they  hear  cries 
and  pistol-shots  from  a  low  drinking-den  of  evil  re- 
pute, situated  in  an  open  field  on  which  the  snow 
lies  deep.  The  detectives  hurry  to  the  scene,  sur- 
round the  house,  break  in  the  door,  and  see,  by  the 
light  of  some  flaming  pine  knots  upon  the  hearth, 
that  an  act  of  violence  has  been  committed.  Tables 
and  chairs  have  been  overturned.  Two  men  are 
stretched  dead,  while  a  third  is  already  in  the  throes 
of  death.  Behind  an  oaken  table  stands  a  young 
and  stalwart  man,  clenching  a  revolver.  His  torn 
garments  resemble  those  of  a  railway  porter.  He 
declares  that  he  has  shot  the  men  in  self-defence, 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  265 

because  they   made   a   desperate   attack   upon   him, 
believing  him  to  be  a  police  spy. 

On  the  face  of  it  there  is  nothing  improbable  in 
this.  His  story  is  believed  by  the  men  who  arrest 
him,  and  especially  by  Gevrol,  a  police-officer  of 
some  rank.  The  youngest  of  the  detectives,  how- 
ever, whose  name  is  Lecoq,  feels  a  vague  suspicion 
that  the  prisoner  is  not  what  he  declares  himself  to 
be,  and  that  underneath  this  crime  there  is  hidden 
a  tale  of  peculiar  mystery.  Two  women  are  known 
to  have  been  present,  but  they  have  escaped.  There 
are  also,  to  the  mind  of  Lecoq,  indications  that  the 
prisoner,  in  spite  of  his  common  clothing,  is  no 
common  person ;  that  he  is  a  man  of  education,  of 
great  natural  ability,  and  perhaps  of  rank;  and 
finally  that  he  had  a  male  accomplice.  These  de- 
ductions of  Lecoq  are  scouted  by  Gevrol ;  but  nev- 
ertheless the  young  detective  resolves  to  establish 
liis  theory  and  to  solve  the  problem.  From  that 
moment  there  begins  a  conflict  of  wits  between  the 
prisoner  on  the  one  side  and  Lecoq  on  the  other, 
the  latter  having  the  sympathy  and  confidence  of 
the  examining  magistrate.  Tlie  scene  of  the  pris- 
oner's examination  by  this  magistrate  is  one  of 
thrilling  interest,  and  it  gives  to  us  Anglo-Saxons 
a  vivid  picture  of  the  workings  of  Frcncli  law  in 
its  assumption  that  a  prisoner  is  guilty  unless  he 
proves  his  innocence.  The  long,  searching  inquiry 
in  which  the  judge  alternately  pleads   with  the  uc- 


266    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

cused  and  browbeats,  threatens,  and  tortures  him, 
hoping  at  last  to  break  him  down  and  wring  from 
him  a  full  confession,  is  wonderfully  written. 

The  prisoner  tells  the  magistrate  a  perfectly 
straightforward  story,  and  yet  there  are  parts  of 
it  which,  under  a  keen  cross-examination,  show 
weakness  and  self-contradiction  sufficient  to 
strcni^then  the  suspicion  of  Lccoq.  Nevertheless, 
the  Q^tec'tive  is  for  the  time  quite  baffled.  All  the 
external  evidence  that  can  be  found,  curiously  con- 
firms the  prisoner's  story.  Lecoq  becomes  convinced 
that  there  is  a  shrewd  accomplice  acting  from  with- 
out, who,  in  some  mysterious  way,  is  working  as  the 
prisoner's  second  self.  The  accused  is  kept  in 
prison.  His  every  action  is  watched,  both  night 
and  day.  Extraordinary  tricks  are  devised  to  com- 
pel him  to  betray  himself.     They  completely  fail. 

At  last,  Lecoq  arranges  matters  so  that  the  mys- 
terious criminal  may  escape.  Lecoq's  plan  is  to 
follow  him  after  he  has  escaped,  and  thus  discover 
who  are  his  friends  and  who  he  really  is.  The  es- 
cape takes  place.  The  prisoner  threads  his  way 
through  the  most  intricate  mazes  of  criminal  Paris, 
followed  by  Lccoq,  who  carries  on  the  pursuit  with 
the  keenness  of  a  hound;  but  at  the  end  of  the  long 
hunt  the  object  of  it  unexpectedly  disappears 
over  a  high  wall,  which  surrounds  the  magnificent 
grounds  and  mansion  of  the  Due  de  Sairmeuse,  one 
of  the  noblest  members  of  the  French  aristocracy. 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  267 

Though  Lccoq  and  the  police  at  once  enter  the  man- 
sion, and  search  all  the  rooms  in  it,  their  bird  ap- 
parently has  flown.  A  ball  and  reception  are  in 
progress  in  the  great  house.  There  are  no  traces 
in  it  of  the  fleeing  criminal ;  and  Lecoq  for  the  time 
confesses  himself  defeated,  suff'cring  in  silence  the 
jeers  of  his  associates,  and  especially  of  Gevrol, 
who  has  become  jealous  of  his  able  and  enthusiastic 
subordinate. 

Lecoq  finally  betakes  himself  to  tlie  house  of  an 
old  re'tired  tradesman,  who  is  an  amateur  in  crimi- 
nology and  detection.  This  person,  named  Taba- 
ret,  but  known  to  the  police  as  Pere  Tirauclair,  is 
much  of  the  time  confined  in  bed  by  gout.  For  his 
own  amusement,  however,  he  collects  all  the  details 
of  every  conspicuous  crime  and  studies  them  with 
intense  avidity,  not  as  crimes,  but  as  psychological 
problems.  Given  all  the  facts,  he  can,  by  the  un- 
erring processes  of  pure  reason,  sift  out  the  false 
from  the  true,  the  irrelevant  from  the  essential,  and 
go  swiftly  to  the  heart  of  any  mystery.  It  is  he 
who  gives  Lecoq  the  clue  to  the  identity  of  the  es- 
caped prisoner. 

Here  is  the  original  suggestion  of  ^lycroft 
Holmes,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  fat  and 
lazy,  spending  his  spare  hours  in  the  Diogenes  Club, 
of  which  no  member  ever  spoke  to  any  other  mem- 
ber. Mycroft  Holmes  does  not  trouble  himself  with 
any  active  work.     He  relies  entirely  upon  his  deduct- 


2C8    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

ive  powers  and  relentless  logic.  It  may  be  said 
that  this  is  only  a  copy  of  Poe's  Auguste  Dupin, 
but  such  is  not  the  case.  Dupin  did  "  outside 
work,"  personally  visited  the  scenes  of  crimes,  in- 
serted advertisements  in  newspapers,  and,  in  fact, 
employed  the  whole  machinery  of  detection.  But 
Mycroft  Holmes,  like  old  Pere  Tirauclair,  simply 
thought  out  the  problem  presented  to  him,  and  then 
directed  others  what  to  do.  Here  we  find  a  concep- 
tion more  attractive  even  than  that  of  Poc;  and 
the  literary  touches  of  Gaboriau  and  Doyle  give 
us  a  genuine  personality  that  far  surpasses  the  in- 
terest of  a  mere  calculating  machine. 

It  is  true  that  Gaboriau  mars  his  story  by  inject- 
ing into  it  a  long  secondary  narrative.  Conan 
Doyle  made  precisely  the  same  mistake  in  his  first 
successful  detective  tale,  A  Study  in  Scarlet;  but 
it  was  a  mistake  which  he  never  repeated.  Gabo- 
riau, therefore,  is  a  link  between  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
and  Conan  Doyle,  just  as  Poe  himself  is  a  link  be- 
tween Voltaire  and  Gaboriau. 

Conan  Doyle  is  the  supreme  writer  of  detective 
stories.  He,  like  Gaboriau,  plays  the  game  fairly, 
since  he  lets  the  reader  have  all  the  knowledge  which 
Holmes  himself  possesses.  It  has  been  written  of 
his  tales: 

The  really  remarkable  thing  about  these  stories  is  that, 
before  the  mystery  is  solved,  the  reader  is  put  in  possession 
of  every   fact  material  to  its  solution.     The  Chinese  puzzle 


i 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  269 

is  handed  over  ■with  no  missing  pieces.  We  are  freely  offered 
every  single  bit  of  evidence  which  could  convince  the  detective. 
That  is,  the  reader  has  been  kept  in  exactly  the  mental  state 
of  the  ingenuous  Dr.  Watson,  or  the  blundering  oflScials, 
Lestrade  and  Gregson.  He  has  seen  all  there  is  to  be  seen; 
and  if  he  fails  to  interpret  events  aright,  it  is  simply  because 
his  own  acuteness  does  not  equal  that  of  the  detective. 

In  other  words,  the  cleverness  of  Doyle  lies  in  his 
simplicity  and  frankness,  and  also  in  the  fact  tha 
his  people  are  living,  breathing  human  beings.  One 
grows  fond  of  Sherlock  Holmes,  not  only  because 
of  his  wonderful  mind,  but  because  of  his  faults  and 
failings.  His  addiction  to  the  cocaine  habit,  his 
dislike  of  women,  his  skill  as  a  boxer,  his  need  when 
thinking  out  a  problem  of  smoking  great  quanti- 
ties of  shag  tobacco  which  he  keeps  in  an  old  slip- 
per, his  trick  of  shooting  bullets  into  his  mantel- 
piece so  as  to  form  the  royal  initials  (V.  11.),  the 
general  disordcrlincss  of  his  housekeeping — all 
these  things  give  him  individualit3\  We  feel  that 
we  actually  know  him.  We  are  almost  as  much  in- 
terested in  his  personal  whims  and  prejudices,  and 
in  his  casual  talks  with  Watson,  as  we  arc  with  his 
triumphs  of  detection. 

And  the  same  interest  adheres  to  Watson,  that 
admirable,  commonplace,  and  usual  Briton,  and  in 
a  less  degree  to  the  official  police  who  employ  Sher- 
lock's skill  and  then  take  credit  to  themselves.  No 
imitators  of  Poe,  or  of  Doyle  himself,  have  been  suc- 
cessful   in    this    thing.      Tiiey   can    think   out   prob- 


270    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

lems,  but  they  can  not  crca'te  men  and  women.  Com- 
pare, for  instance,  the  detective  stories  lately  writ- 
ten bj'  Mr.  Jacques  Futrclle  and  M.  Gaston  Leroux. 
Their  work  is  purely  machine  work.  To  go  further 
back,  even  Balzac,  who  made  an  attempt  at  detect- 
,  ive  fiction  in  his  Ferragus,  was  wise  enough  to  see 
i  that  this  was  not  his  forte.  He  and  Ponson  du 
wTerrail  in  this  one  particular  field  seem  stodgy  and 
mechanical.  Yet  even  Gaboriau  is  superior  to  Poe. 
Had  there  been  no  Gaboriau,  we  might  never  have 
had  that  fascinating  cycle  of  stories  which  Conan 
Doyle  has  written  around  the  great  detective  who 
lived  in  Baker  Street,  and  whose  name  is  as  well 
known  all  over  the  world  to-day  as  that  of  Shylock, 
FalstafF,  or  any  other  creation  of  Shakespeare 
himself,  with,  perhaps,  Hamlet  as  the  one  excep- 
tion. 

Of  course,  this  seems  extravagant;  but  the  con- 
temporary public  is  seldom  a  good  judge  of  what 
is  best  or  of  what  is  worst  in  the  writers  of  their 
own  time.  They  either  overpraise  or  underestimate. 
It  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  truism  that  professional 
critics  of  literature  are  generally  the  very  last  per- 
sons in  the  world  to  recognise  the  value  of  new  lit- 
erature when  they  see  it.  This  is  partly  because 
such  standards  as  they  have  are  purely  conven- 
tional, and  partly  because  they  themselves  are 
timorous  and  mistrustful  and  afraid  of  making  mis- 
takes.    Hence  they  hesitate  to  commit  themselves 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  271 

to  a  definite  opinion  until  they  are  pretty  sure  that 
they  are  on  the  side  of  the  majority.  The  result  is 
that  thej'  follow  where  they  ought  to  lead,  and  are 
apt  to  come  in  at  the  tail  of  the  procession  when 
they  ought  *to  come  in  at  its  head.  Just  as  the  ven- 
erable Austrian  commanders  in  Italy  were  convinced 
that  Napoleon  knew  nothing  about  the  art  of  war 
because  he  was  defeating  them  in  reckless  defiancf 
of  the  rules  laid  down  in  the  military  text-books,  so 
our  literary  critics  would  not  admit  that  Kipling's 
first  five  books  had  any  value;  for  these  were  bril- 
liant in  an  utterly  new  way,  and  not  in  the  thor- 
oughly recognised  old  way.  Originality  is  terribly 
disconcerting  to  unoriginal  people.  They  think  it 
frivolous  or  "  unsound  "  or  "  queer."  They  never 
quite  approve  of  it.  Therefore,  they  glorify  Rob- 
cr't  Louis  Stevenson  for  those  productions  of  his 
that  are  good  in  a  conventional  style,  but  ignore  his 
one  extraordinary  tour  de  force  which  is  unique  in 
literature.  For,  a  century  hence,  Treasure  Island 
and  The  Master  of  Ballantrae  and  all  tlie  essays  will 
be  only  names  to  the  reading  public,  while  Dr. 
Jelcyll  and  Mr.  Ilydc  will  stand  as  the  most  strik- 
ing allegory  ever  written  on  the  curious  duality  of 
man's  moral  nature. 

The  case  of  Sir  ArUiur  Conan  Doyle  is  almost  as 
interesting  as  the  case  of  Mr.  Kipling,  in  kind 
though  not  in  degree.  Sir  Arthur  docs  not  take 
himself  and  his  writings  very  seriously.     Neither  did 


272    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

Plautus  or  Sliakcspeare,  for  that  matter.  Sir  Ar- 
thur Doyle  is  a  genial,  wholesome,  sensible  Anglo- 
Celt  who  turns  off  his  work  in  a  comfortable  sort 
of  way.  He  is  not  a  genius  of  the  highest  order, 
but  he  has  a  leaven  of  genius  in  his  make-up,  and 
he  is  a  born  story-teller  as  truly  as  was  Herodotus 
or  Defoe.  Most  of  his  books  are  just  admirable 
examples  of  the  story-telling  quality  which  in  some 
mysterious  fashion  makes  its  possessor  able  to  give 
real  interest  to  even  a  commonplace  narrative.  In 
fact,  the  least  important  of  his  stories — as  for  in- 
stance some  of  those  in  Round  the  Red  Lamp — are 
worth  reading  many  times.  They  may  be  as  im- 
probable as  the  one  about  the  resuscitated  Egyp- 
tian mummy  or  'the  electrocution  at  Los  Amigos ; 
but  all  the  same  j^ou  will  be  glad  to  know  them  and 
you  will  wish  for  more.  In  his  historical  novels. 
The  White  Company  and  Micah  Clark,  this  story- 
telling is  of  a  high  order,  yet  still  not  going  beyond 
the  limits  of  great  cleverness.  The  critics,  how- 
ever, would  select  these  books  as  containing  the 
best  of  which  Doyle  is  capable.  The  one  thing  of 
his  that  is  really  indicative  of  creative  genius  they 
merely  smile  upon  indulgently,  and  pass  by  with  as 
little  notice  as  they  would  give  to  a  dime-novel,  and 
with  much  less  notice  than  they  often  devote  to  some 
schoolgirl's  machine-made  historical  romance.  It 
never  occurs  to  them  that  English  fiction  was  per- 
manently enriched  when  Dr.  Doyle,  as  he  then  was, 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  273 

began  the  cycle  of  stories  whose  protagonist  is  Mr. 
Sherlock  Hohnes. 

It  is  likely  that  most  literary  critics,  if  asked  to 
give    an    opinion    about    these    remarkable    stories, 
would  at  once  compare  them  with  those  of  Gabo- 
riau  and  feel  that  there  was  nothing  more  to  say. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Sherlock  Holmes  s'to- 
ries  are  not  only  immensely  superior  to  anything  of 
Gaboriau's,  but  in  some  respects  the  best  of  them 
are  better  than  those  tales  of  Poe  wliich  treat  of 
crime  and  its  detection.     Gaboriau  is  an  excellent 
literary    artisan.     His    mysteries    are    very    neatly 
/constructed.     The  parts  all  dovetail  perfectly.    But 
'  they  have  little  artistic  value,  and  the  unravelling 
of  their  complicated  plots  is  like  the  dissection  of 
a  Chinese  puzzle  which  interests  by  its  ingenuity, 
but  appeals  neither  to  the  intellect  nor  to  the  im- 
agination.    Poe,  on  the  o'thcr  hand,  is  highly  intel- 
lectual, and  in  The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morf^ne,  for 
instance,  he  stirs  the  imagination  very  powerfully. 
le  can  rouse  the  sense  of  horror  and  make  his  niys- 
ry  deepen  into  ghastliness  and  terror, 
r  ^Conan  Doyle,  however,  can  do  these  tilings  and^ 
/give    us    still    another    ingredient — the    human    cle- 
I  ment.      Sherlock   Holmes,   as   has   been   said,  would 
\  interest  us  simply  as  a  man.     His  curiously  varied 
tastes,  his  fondness  for  good  music  and  rare  books, 
his   disorderly   rooms,  his   utter  boredom   when    not 
absorbed  in  disentangling  <nysterics,  his  prodigious 


27i    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

consumption  of  shag  tobacco  when  working  out  his 
problems,  his  addiction  to  the  cocaine  habit — a  cu- 
rious touch — all  these  things  amuse  or  interest  or 
pique  us  until  we  grow  fond  of  him  and  get  at  last 
to  know  him  almost  as  well  as  though  we,  too, 
shared  his  rooms  in  Baker  Street.  Watson  is  an- 
other creation.  Like  all  true  artists,  who  do  'their 
best  work  by  instinct  rather  than  self-consciously, 
it  is  probable  that  Doyle  had  no  idea  of  how  su- 
premely clever  a  thing  it  was  to  make  Watson  the 
companion  and  chronicler  and  also  the  foil  of  Sher- 
lock Holmes.  Watson,  the  matter-of-fact,  sensible, 
and  friendly  surgeon,  always  planting  both  his 
broad  feet  squarely  on  the  earth,  is  a  typically 
British  character,  and  his  lack  of  insight  makes 
Holmes's  wonderful  intuition  appear  twice  as  won- 
derful by  the  force  of  contrast.  Moreover,  by  let- 
ting Watson  be  the  narrator  of  the  stories,  they 
are  made  to  seem  always  plausible  to  the  reader, 
because  of  their  sober,  unemotional  manner.  Le- 
strange  and  Gregson,  of  the  regular  detective  force, 
are  also  types  drawn  adequately  with  a  few  broad 
strokes.  Beside  them  Gaborlau's  Gevrol  is  shadowy 
and  unreal.  The  creation  of  Mycroft  Holmes  was 
a  stroke  of  genius.  That  Sherlock  Holmes  should 
have  had  a  brother,  superior  in  inductive  reasoning 
even  to  Sherlock  himself,  is  interesting;  that  he 
should  be  fat  and  luxurious  and  far  too  lazy  to  use 
his  gifts  in  any  practical  way,  is   dehcious.     The 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  '275 

likeness  of  mind  and  the  utter  unlikeness  of  temper- 
ament between  the  indolent  My  croft  and  the  keen, 
nervous,  high-strung  Sherlock  is  fascinating.  Tliat 
Mjcroft  Holmes  is  introduced  in  but  a  single  story 
— that  of  the  Greek  interpreter  ^ — shows  a  remark- 
able artistic  self-control  on  the  part  of  Doyle.  The 
glimpse  that  is  given  of  liim  is  tantalising.  One 
longs  to  know  more  about  him,  but  his  creator  very 
wisely  stayed  his  hand. 

The  very  best  of  all  these  stories  are  not  the  long 
ones — A  Study  in  Scarlet  and  The  Sign  of  the  Four 
• — though  each  of  these  contains  many  very  strik- 
ing things,  and  the  first  of  them  (of  which  Dr. 
Doyle  himself  is  said  to  have  thought  so  little  that 
he  sold  the  manuscript  outright  for  $125)  intro- 
duces us  to  Slierlock  at  the  outset  of  his  career. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  most  finished  and  most 
effective  tale  is  that  of  The  SpccJdcd  Band.  This 
is  a  marvel  of  construction  and  of  execution  not 
merely  worthy  of  Poe,  but  better  tlian  Foe's  best. 
From  the  very  first  page  the  reader's  interest  is 
riveted  upon  a  mystery  which,  as  it  develops,  is  ut- 
terly inscrutable  and  fascinates  one  by  its  unde- 
fined yet  very  evident  horror.  The  inexplicable 
death  of  the  elder  sister,  the  warnings  given  to  the 
surviving  girl,  the  peculiar  whistle  in  the  night,  the 
clanging    sound    of    metal,    the    strange    discoveries 

1  He  Is  scf-n  a^nin,  to  be  sure,  in   The   Finnl  Problem,  l-iil 
only  in  u  rasual  way,  having  no  "  speaking  jiart." 


276    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

made  by  Holmes,  and  then  that  nerve-racking  vigil 
in  the  blackness  of  midnight  with  the  hideous  reve- 
lation at  the  end  of  it — I  know  of  nothing  in  fiction 
of  this  genre  which  possesses  an  interes't  so  absorb- 
ingly intense. 

Of  a  different  character  is  The  Naval  Treaty, 
wliich  I  place  next  to  The  Speckled  Band  in  merit 
as  a  story.  This  tale  affords  a  good  example  of 
the  method  by  which  the  circumstances  of  a  mys- 
terious event  are  set  forth  qui'te  frankly  and  yet  in 
such  a  way  that  the  perfectly  simple  and  obvious 
explanation  never  once  occurs  to  you.  The  draft 
of  a  secret  naval  treaty  between  England  and  Italy 
is  to  be  copied  by  young  Phelps,  of  the  Bri'tish  For- 
eign Office,  who  is  a  near  relative  of  Lord  Hold- 
hurst,  the  Foreign  Minister.  No  one  but  Phelps 
and  Lord  Holdhurst  know  of  it.  The  reputation 
of  both  these  men  is  at  stake,  if  the  terms  of  the 
treaty  shall  be  discovered;  and,  moreover,  serious 
diplomatic  complications  will  ensue.  Phelps  has  re- 
mained at  his  desk  In  the  Foreign  Office  after  every 
one  but  the  janitor  has  left,  and  then  he  begins  to 
make  the  required  draft.  Finding  that  it  will  keep 
him  later  than  he  had  expected,  he  goes  downstairs 
to  ask  the  doorkeeper  to  get  him  a  cup  of  coffee. 
While  he  is  giving  the  order,  he  hears  a  bell  in  his 
room  ring,  and,  rushing  back  again,  he  finds  the 
room  empty  and  the  treaty  gone.  Now,  in  the  first 
place,  as  no  human  being  knew  that  the  treaty  was 


THE    DETECTIVE    STORY  277 

there,  and,  in  the  second  place,  as  the  thief,  instead 
of  stealing  it  and  sneaking  quietly  away,  rang  the 
bell  to  announce  his  presence,  the  problem  seems  on 
the  face  of  it  insoluble;  yet  the  explanation  of  it, 
when  it  comes,  is  really  the  simplest  and  most  nat- 
ural thing  in  the  world.  Herein  Doyle's  plots  dif- 
fer utterly  from  Gaboriau's.  Those  of  the  French 
/writer  are  complex  to  a  degree ;  those  of  Doyle  are 
simplicity  itself.  The  reader  is  just  as  hopelessly 
\  puzzled  by  them,  but  the  solution,  when  it  comes, j 
comes  not  as  a  mathematical  demonstration,  but  as 
a  flash  of  light  in  a  dark  place — illumining,  sur- 
prising, delighting,  all  at  once. 

After  the  two  stories  just  mentioned,  I  should 
place,  without  attempting  to  assign  them  a  definite 
order  of  merit.  Silver  Blaze,  The  Resident  Patient, 
The  Engineer's  Thumb,  The  Boscomhe  Valley  M//s- 
tery.  The  Five  Orange  Pips,  The  Reigate  Puzzle, 
and  The  Final  Problem.  Three  stories  make  too 
strong  a  demand  upon  the  reader's  credulity. 
These  are,  The  Red  Headed  League,  A  Case  of 
Identity,  and  The  Man  with  the  Twisted  Lip,  yet 
the  first  of  them  is  none  the  less  one  of  the  most 
absorbing  interest.  There  is,  indeed,  not  one  story 
in  the  whole  cycle  which  docs  not  contain  many 
touches  that  positively  fascinate  one  by  their  in- 
genuity and  unexpectedness. 

Doyle  will  sooner  or  Inter  get  the  rocognition 
from  the  critics  which  he  has  already  won   from  the 


278    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

reading  public.  His  hold  upon  that  public  is  an 
extraordinary  one.  IMany  books  of  the  day  sell  by 
the  hundreds  of  thousands,  yet  they  are  not  talked 
about  and  no  one  clamours  for  more  from  their  au- 
thors' pens.  But  in  the  case  of  the  Sherlock  Holmes 
adventures,  the  public  not  only  buys  and  reads,  but 
discusses  them  continually ;  and  it  has  so  strenu- 
ously insisted  upon  having  more  that  Dr.  Doyle 
has  been  obliged  to  yield  to  the  demand.  This  com- 
pliance has  been  most  unfortunate  for  the  author's 
reputation.  He  has  written  not  because  he  wished 
to  write,  but  because  he  was  made  to  do  so.  Hence, 
the  later  stories  about  Sherlock  Holmes  are  feeble 
trash  with  the  exception  of  The  Hound  of  the  Bas- 
kervilles.  Whatever  is  best  in  his  studies  of  the 
great  detective  will  be  found  in  the  Adventures  and 
the  Memoirs.  The  others  will  be  forgotten,  just  as 
Dred  has  been  forgotten,  while  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 
is  sure  of  immortality.  But  when  the  dross  shall 
have  been  purged  away,  there  will  remain  a  group 
of  stories  so  fascinating  as  to  give  their  author  the 
highest  rank  among  those  who  have  attempted  this 
very  interesting  kind  of  fiction. 


THE   rSYCIIOT.OGY  OF   THE 
PRINTED   PAGE 


XV 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  PRINTED  PAGE 

There  used  to  be  a  perennially  rcciirrinf^  gibe  di- 
rected against  amateurs  in  writing,  and  especially 
against  women  amateurs,  to  the  effect  that  the 
"  copy  "  which  they  sent  to  editors  was  in  the  form 
of  manuscript  written  on  both  sides  of  the  paper  and 
tied  with  a  blue  ribbon.  In  these  days,  and  since  the 
invention  of  the  t^'pewriter,  even  amateurs  know  bet- 
ter than  to  do  a  thing  like  that ;  yet  neither  tliey 
nor  many  professional  writers  and  makers  of  litera- 
ture consider  with  sufficient  care  the  value  and  tlic 
very  serious  importance  of  the  external  form  in 
which  their  thoughts,  their  narratives,  and  their 
descriptions  are  laid  before  the  editor  and,  after  him, 
the  public.  Tlie  subj(>ct  is  not  a  trifling  one;  and 
an  analysis  of  it  and  of  some  of  the  elementary  prin- 
ciples that  underlie  it  is  well  deserving  of  attention. 
To  go  back  to  the  very  beginning,  why  is  it  bet- 
ter, in  submitting  anything  to  an  editor  or  to  the 
reader  for  a  publislilng  house,  to  have  it  ty})ewrilten 
ratlier  fh.in  to  send  it  in  tlie  form  of  nnmuscript  .^ 
Ninety-nine  jxrsoiis  out  of  a  hundred  will  answer 
immediately:  "Oh,  because  typewriting  is  easier  to 

281 


282    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

read  than  handwriting;  and  very  hkcly  an  editor 
will  not  trouble  himself  over  a  manuscript;  whereas, 
if  it  had  been  typewritten,  he  would  be  quite  willing 
to  examine  it."  That  theory  has  no  truth  in  it,  at 
least  according  to  the  meaning  which  it  is  intended 
to  convey.  An  editor  or  a  publisher's  reader  ex- 
amines everything  that  is  submitted  to  him;  in  the 
first  place,  because  it  is  his  business  to  do  so,  and  in 
the  second  place,  because  he  is  always  on  the  alert 
for  something  original  and  striking,  and  he  never 
knows  before  reading  it,  whether  even  the  roughest 
scrawl  may  not  contain  something  that  is  worth  his 
while. 

The  real  advantage  of  the  typewritten  copy  over 
the  manuscript  is  one  that  depends  upon  a  principle 
which  Herbert  Spencer  was  the  first  to  notice  care- 
fully. This  is  the  principle  of  the  Economy  of  At- 
tention, and  its  relation  to  the  subject  now  under 
discussion  ought  to  be  well  weighed  by  everyone  who 
writes  for  publication.  When  this  is  done,  the  reason 
will  be  plain  why  it  is  more  advantageous  for  an  au- 
thor to  have  his  copy  read  in  a  typewritten  form 
rather  than  in  his  own  handwriting.  In  examining 
any  piece  of  literary  work  with  intelligence  and  crit- 
ical judgment,  it  is  greatly  to  be  desired  that  the 
mind  should  not  be  distracted  from  the  real  task  be- 
fore it,  and  that  it  should  be  directed  wholly  to  the 
thought,  the  style,  and  the  feeling  of  the  writer,  and 
to  nothing  else  whatever.     Now,  in  reading  a  manu- 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  PRINTED  PAGE  283 

script  in  almost  anyone's  chirograpliy,  the  mind  can 
not  possibly  concentrate  its  whole  attention  upon  the 
only  things  that  really  count.  First  of  all,  some  lit- 
tle time  is  needed  to  adjust  one's  eye  to  the  ordinary 
peculiarities  of  the  writing ;  and  this,  at  the  very  out- 
set, divides  the  attention  and  makes  necessarj'  a  con- 
scious effort  which  is  unfavourable  to  concentrated 
thought.  Then,  again,  there  are  always  special  pe- 
culiarities which  occur  and  re-occur ;  and  every  time 
that  one  of  these  is  met,  it  checks  to  some  extent  the 
current  of  thought  and,  if  often  repeated,  results  in 
giving  a  blurred  impression  in  place  of  an  impression 
that  is  clean-cut  and  distinct.  Of  course,  when  the 
handwriting  is  very  bad,  this  is  all  very  much  intensi- 
fied ;  and  it  often  happens  that  after  the  reader  has 
laid  down  the  manuscript,  he  can  remember  very  little 
about  its  contents,  because  his  attention  has  been  so 
greatly  divided  that  he  has  really  given  the  larger 
part  of  it  to  the  purely  mechanical  difficulties  of 
his  task. 

Yet  there  is  something  else  which  is  less  obvious 
than  what  has  just  been  dcscril)cd,  though  fully  as 
important.  In  reading  manuscript,  you  necessarily 
(aiif]  because  of  the  reasons  already  mentioned) 
read  it  line  by  line — sometimes  almost  word  by  word; 
whereas,  if  set  forth  in  print,  you  get  a  certain  per- 
spective and  a  certain  completeness  as  you  read,  so 
that  you  see  not  only  the  isolated  expressions  and 
the  separate  phrases,  but  also  their  relation  to  what 


28'i    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

goes  before  and  to  what  comes  immediately  after. 
In  other  words,  you  can  easily  criticise  the  writer's 
sense  of  unity  and  harmony  and  proportion. 

Reading  anything  in  manuscript  is  like  judging 
an  army  by  inspecting  each  soldier  individually. 
Reading  a  printed  page  is  like  seeing  an  army  in  the 
field  and  watching  its  evolutions,  which  exhibit  not 
only  the  individual  soldiers,  but  the  formation  and 
the  inter-relation  of  companies,  battalions,  regiments, 
and  brigades.  It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  judge  ac- 
curately any  piece  of  literary  work  until  you  read 
it  with  a  perfect  unconsciousness  of  everything  that 
is  external  to  the  writer's  thought  and  to  his  expres- 
sion of  it.  The  typography,  the  mechanical  means 
by  which  thought  and  expression  pass  through  the 
eye  into  the  brain,  ought  to  be  like  a  sheet  of  flaw- 
less crystal,  so  clear  that  you  can  gaze  through  it 
without  ever  being  conscious  that  it  is  there.  To  my 
mind,  indeed,  the  innermost  soul  of  any  literary  crea- 
tion can  never  be  seen  in  all  its  clarity  and  truth 
until  one  views  it  through  the  medium  of  the  printed 
page,  in  which  there  must  be  absolutely  nothing  to 
divide  attention,  to  interrupt  the  thought,  or  to  of- 
fend one's  sense  of  form. 

This  last  remark  inevitably  opens  up  another 
phase  of  the  subject  that  I  have  been  considering, 
and  it  takes  us  into  a  wider  and  more  interesting 
field.  In  the  printed  page,  apart  from  typographical 
errors  (which,  as  they  are  mere  accidents,  need  not 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE   PRINTED  PAGE  285 

be  mentioned),  what  is  it  that  ma}'  enter  to  divide 
attention  and  to  offend  our  sense  of  form?  And, 
moreover,  if  the  typographical  arrangement  can  in- 
terfere with  one's  pleasure  and  can  do  something  to 
mar  the  effect  of  what  we  read,  may  it  not  be  possible, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  there  are  certain  principles  of 
typography  which  if  properly  observed  may  augment 
that  pleasure  and  heighten  the  satisfaction  of  the 
reader  without  his  ever  being  conscious  of  the  cause, 
just  as  some  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  concealed  allitera- 
tions charm  the  ear  and  give  to  the  lines  a  hidden  har- 
mony whose  source  we  do  not  recognise  until  we  come 
to  analyse  the  verses?  Or,  to  put  tlie  question  more 
directly,  can  an  author,  by  taking  thought  about  the 
typographical  arrangement  of  his  printed  work,  give 
to  that  work  a  greater  power  to  interest  and  attract 
than  it  would  possess  were  its  arrangement  left  to  tlie 
mercies  of  tlie  proof-reader  and  compositors  wlio  fol- 
low bh'iidly  an  "  office  system  "? 

I  tliink  decidedly  that  he  can.  In  fact,  I  would 
go  still  further  and  say  that  while  a  really  interest- 
ing book  can  not  be  made  dull  nor  a  dull  book  in- 
teresting, even  by  a  psychological  typographer,  it 
is  entirely  possible  to  print  an  interesting  book  in 
such  a  way  that  at  first  sight  it  shall  seem  to  be  a 
dull  one,  and  In  like  manner  In  j)riiit  a  dull  ixiok  in 
such  a  way  that  at  first  sight  it  sli/dl  seem  in  be  in- 
teresting. Kvery  one  of  us  has  many  times  pickid 
up  a  book  and  turned  its  pages  over  in  a  casual  sort 


286    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

of  fasliion  and  then  put  it  down  with  the  remark: 
*'  That  looks  hke  a  tiresome  book,"  or  again,  "  That 
book  looks  readable."  How  is  it  that  we  come  to 
form  such  instinctive  judgments  as  these?  Why 
does  one  book  "  look  tiresome  "  and  another  seem  to 
be  attractive?  For  either  opinion  there  is  always  a 
good  and  sufficient  reason,  and  it  would  be  well  if 
authors,  in  their  own  interest,  should  try  to  learn 
just  what  the  reason  is. 

A  book  is  like  a  human  being.  You  meet  a  person 
for  the  first  time  and  your  immediate  impression  of 
him  is  necessarily  based  upon  what  is  wholly  super- 
ficial. You  judge  him  by  his  face,  his  manner,  his 
voice,  and  even  by  his  clothes ;  and  you  are  attracted 
or  repelled  by  the  combination  of  all  these  purely 
extraneous  attributes.  Further  acquaintance  may 
show  that  your  first  impression  was  incorrect.  The 
man  whose  eye  is  dull,  whose  manner  is  awkward,  and 
whose  appearance  is  slovenly,  may  turn  out  to  have 
an  interesting  mind  and  a  heart  of  gold.  Another, 
whose  face  attracts  you,  whose  manners  are  perfect, 
and  whose  personal  appearance  is  immaculate,  may 
have  an  empty  head  or  an  evil  heart.  But  just  as 
it  would  be  better  if  all  of  us  could  possess  not  only 
internal  merit  but  external  polish,  so  is  it  also  with 
any  book.  In  what  way,  then,  can  the  typography 
of  a  printed  page  contribute  to  the  reader's  interest 
without  dividing  his  attention?  There  enter  here 
two  principles,  of  which  the  first  is  the  principle  of 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  PRINTED  PAGE  287 

Variety,  and  the  second  the  principle  of  Fitness. 
Both  of  them  in  part  subserve  tlie  principle  of  Econ- 
omy of  Attention. 

The  principle  of  Variety  is  first  involved  in  the 
division  of  the  text  into  paragraphs.  This  is  the 
initial  step  toward  making  the  printed  page  take 
on  an  interesting  look.  A  solid  unbroken  mass  of 
words  is  of  all  tilings  the  most  rcpcllant  to  a  person 
who  takes  up  a  volume  and  looks  it  over;  for  here 
solidity  of  appearance  is  taken  as  sj-nonynious  with 
heaviness  and  even  dullness  of  content.  This  effect 
is  largely  eliminated  and  the  page  is  noticeably  light- 
ened as  soon  as  it  is  judiciously  paragraphed.  We 
then  feel  that  our  author  is  not  wearily  pursuing  a 
single  train  of  thought,  but  that  he  possesses  the  men- 
tal mobility  which  allows  him  to  shift  his  ground  be- 
fore he  becomes  monotonous.  The  division  into  para- 
graphs, however,  should  be  very  carefully  made, 
and  not  In  any  arbitrary  fashion  ;  since  the  perfect 
paragraph  contains  the  dcvclopmeiif  of  a  single 
idea,  and  it  ought  not  to  end  until  that  development 
has  been  fully  rounded  out.  'J'^lierc  is,  however,  al- 
most always  a  slight  transition  In  the  thought  as  one 
develops  It,  from  one  phase  to  another,  and  .it  this 
point  f)f  transition  a  new  j)aragraph  may  always 
very  properly  !)egln.  Too  shorl  ]);iragrnphs  are 
quite  as  bad  as  paragra})]is  th.it  are  \on  long;  for 
while  tlie  latter  make  the  page  seem  heavy,  I  lie  for- 
mer make   it   seem   scatttrbrained   and   s(raj)j)y,   as 


288    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

tliougli  the  writer  had  dashed  from  one  idea  to  an- 
other without  giving  adequate  treatment  to  any  one 
of  them.  This  is  a  great  defect  in  many  of  the  books 
that  are  printed  in  France,  which  sometimes  com- 
mence a  new  paragraph  almost  with  every  sentence. 
I  fancy  tliat  this  practice  began  with  the  feuilleton- 
istes  of  the  Parisian  journals,  who  are  paid  by  the 
line  and  who,  in  paragraphing  liberally,  eke  out  a 
few  more  francs  by  splitting  up  their  text  without 
any  reference  to  unity  or  continuity. 

In  writing  a  novel,  a  solid  paragraph  at  the  begin- 
ning is  a  bad  thing.  The  reader  has  not  as  yet  be- 
come interested ;  and  when  he  meets  at  the  outset  a 
long  piece  of  description  or  a  diffuse  preliminary  ex- 
planation, he  feels  that  he  is  being  compelled,  as  it 
were,  to  work  his  way  into  the  story  and  to  submit  to 
a  certain  amount  of  boredom  before  his  interest  is 
aroused.  This  is  a  terrible  defect  in  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  first  novel,  Waverlei/,  wherein  the  real  action 
of  the  story  does  not  commence  until  one  reaches 
the  end  of  about  forty  pages  of  almost  irrelevant 
discourse.  Scott's  was  a  leisurely  and  easy-going 
age,  and  the  traditions  of  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery 
still  lingered  in  it.  Were  Waverley  to  appear  to-day 
for  the  first  time,  it  is  doubtful  whether  anyone 
would  ever  have  the  patience  to  get  far  enough  along 
in  it  to  discover  that  it  is,  after  all,  a  work  of  genius. 
The  novel  which  commences  with  a  conversation  is 
the  novel  which  commences  best.     When  you  take 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE   PRINTED  PAGE  289 

it  up,  you  see  that  there  is  no  preliminary  penance 
to  be  exacted  of  3'ou,  but  that  you  can  plunge  at 
once  into  the  middle  of  the  action :  whereas  the  lonsr 
introductory  paragraph  gives  you  the  same  feeling 
that  you  have  whenever  you  make  a  call  and  are 
kept  for  half  an  hour  waiting  in  the  drawing-room, 
with  this  additional  disadvantage  in  the  case  of  the 
novel  that  you  are  not  even  aware  in  advance  whether 
the  person  on  whom  you  are  calling  is  one  whom  you 
really  care  to  see  after  all. 

Variety  and  lightness  are  still  further  gained  b}' 
the  judicious  use  of  capital  letters,  of  italics,  of  quo- 
tation-marks, and  sometimes  (though  sparingly)  of 
a  line  or  two  of  verse,  which  requires  the  use  of  a 
smaller  type.  Capital  letters,  of  course,  come  in 
mainly  through  the  employment  of  proper  names. 
In  novels  and  stories  this,  from  the  nature  of  llu- 
case,  adjusts  itself.  In  other  kinds  of  writing,  how- 
ever, as,  for  instance,  in  essays  and  exposition,  the 
author  ought  to  bear  the  point  in  mind.  Lest  some- 
one should  say  that  this  is  an  absurdly  mechanical 
way  of  looking  at  literary  composition,  I  would  point 
out  that  the  principle  involved  rests  upon  a  very 
sound  psychological  basis.  Wh}',  in  an  essay,  for 
example,  does  a  page  appear  to  Ix'  more  readable 
when  it  contains  a  number  of  words  conimencing  with 
capital  letters?  It  is  not  merely  because  tlii-se  let- 
ters afford  variety  to  the  eye,  l)ut  It  is  because  tliey 
indicate  that   the  writer  is  not  indulging  in  gencr- 


290    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

alitics  or  in  abstractions,  but  that  he  is  giving  con- 
crete instances,  illustrations,  and  examples — in  other 
words,  that  he  is  interesting.  For  in  all  writing,  the 
strongest  effects  are  produced  by  the  citation  of 
specific  instances,  since  these  come  home  with  the 
greatest  force  to  the  reader's  mind — a  principle  laid 
down  by  Horace  when  he  said  that  the  story-telling 
Homer  was  a  more  effective  teacher  of  moral  philoso- 
phy than  was  the  abstract  reasoner,  Chrysippus. 

Italics,  here  and  there  employed,  afford  another 
very  useful  means  of  securing  the  effect  of  variety. 
When  used  to  indicate  the  title  of  a  book,  the  name 
of  a  ship,  or  the  introduction  of  a  foreign  word 
or  phrase,  they  produce  the  impression  of  vivacity 
and  colour,  and  never  fail  to  catch  the  eye  as  one 
looks  along  the  printed  page.  Quotation-marks 
are  even  more  valuable  as  a  means  to  the  same  end. 
They  embody  the  suggestion  of  something  piquant, 
unexpected,  or  unusual,  because  they  imply  that  the 
writer  has  quoted  something  that  is  particularly 
worth  the  attention  of  the  reader.  By  all  these  de- 
vices, therefore,  a  printed  page  may  be  transformed, 
in  appearance  at  least,  from  one  that  is  characterless 
and  tiresome  into  one  that  has  the  outward  indica- 
tions of  attractiveness  and  personality  and  interest. 

Some  may  say,  of  course,  that  the  principle  of 
Variety  seems  on  the  face  of  it  quite  contradictory 
to  the  principle  of  Economy  of  Attention.  Docs  not 
variety   itself   imply   an   attention   that   is   divided.'^ 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE   TRIXTED  PAGE  291 

HarcII}- ;  for  the  variety  which  interests  and  which  is 
an  essential  part  of  an  impression  as  a  whole  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  factors  in  riveting  attention 
upon  the  work  in  hand.  Indeed,  there  are  few  things 
more  fatal  than  monotony  to  continuous  and  undi- 
verted mental  effort.  Take  down  a  volume  of  Lucre- 
tius and  read  three  pages  of  his  poetry  aloud.  His 
hexameters  have  the  same  majestic  roll  and  cadence 
that  mark  the  later  lines  of  Vergil ;  but  in  Lucretius 
this  roll  and  cadence  soon  take  on  a  certain  sameness, 
so  that  presently  you  discover  that  your  thoughts  are 
wandering  from  his  argument  to  other  things,  and 
that  you  are  conscious  only  of  the  sound.  With  the 
hexameters  of  Vergil  this  is  not  the  case,  since  he  has 
introduced  into  them  the  principle  of  Variety  by 
contriving  with  consummate  art  so  many  delicate 
changes  of  rhythm,  so  many  shiftings  of  the  ca'sura, 
and  so  delightful  a  diversity  in  the  division  of  his 
lines,  as  to  destroy  monotony  and  thereby  keep  the 
mind  Intent  upon  what  he  is  saying,  while  the  car  is 
still  ravished  by  his  hannonles. 

Tlie  principle  of  Fitness  is  the  principle  which 
controls  and  subtly  limits  the  principle  of  Varlefy, 
and  ill  rioing  so  subserves,  as  I  have  said,  the  ])rlii- 
clple  of  the  Economy  of  Attention,  lis  essence  is 
good  taste  and  a  sensitive  appreciation  of  whaf  is 
allowable.  ]''()r,  wliile  variety  is  always  to  l)e  soiiglif, 
it  must  be  discreetly  sought  und  in  a  way  thai  will 
gently   stimulale  the  attention   and    not    distract  it. 


292    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

For  example,  in  the  use  of  capital  letters,  apart 
from  proper  names  in  the  strictest  definition  of  that 
term,  there  are  many  words  regarding  which  diversity 
prevails.  Shall  we  capitalise  such  titles  as  "  Czar," 
"Mikado,"  "King?"  Yes,  when  they  relate  to  a 
specific  czar,  mikado  or  king,  but  not  when  they  are 
otlierwise  employed.  In  the  first  instance  they  are 
truly  proper  names,  and  they  bring  to  the  mind  a 
distinctly  personal  and  definite  conception.  Hence, 
to  capitalise  them  gives  variety  to  the  appearance  of 
the  printed  page,  thus  not  only  catching  the  atten- 
tion of  the  reader,  but  retaining  it ;  whereas  to  print 
"  the  czar,"  "  the  mikado  "  and  so  forth,  since  it  is 
not  what  one  is  looking  for,  gives  us  pause  and 
checks,  if  ever  so  slightly,  the  train  of  thought. 

So  with  certain  other  words  that  stand  out  as  im- 
portant. There  is  a  newspaper  which  I  have  in  mind 
that  is  guilty  of  such  anomalies  and  crudities  as 
"  Park  row,"  "  Maiden  lane,"  "  Grand  street," 
"  War  office,"  and  "  Land  league  " — expressions  in 
which  the  last  word  is  just  as  much  a  part  of  the 
name  as  is  the  first — and  also  "  dreibund,"  "  treaty 
of  Paris,"  and  "  declaration  of  independence." 
These  last  are  quite  as  specific,  as  important  and  as 
individual  as  the  names  of  persons ;  so  that  when  you 
find  a  neglect  to  capitalise  them  properly,  you  stop 
for  the  moment  in  your  reading,  your  thought  wan- 
dors  from  the  subject,  and  you  feel  a  little  stirring 
of  resentment  which  puts  you,  half  unconsciously. 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  PRINTED  PAGE  293 

out  of  sympath}'  with  the  writer.  On  tlie  other  hand, 
to  use  capitals  lavishly,  as  a  German  does  and  as 
Carlyle  did,  is  an  affectation  which  equally  offends 
you ;  for  it  also  hinders  mental  concentration. 

As  to  the  use  of  inverted  commas,  or  quotation- 
marks,  a  whole  treatise  might  be  written ;  but  the 
general  principles  can  be  summed  up  briefly.  The 
misuse  of  quotation-marks  is  the  surest  sign  of  the 
amateur  in  writing.  It  is  the  hall-mark  of  the  liter- 
ary novice.  Apart  from  their  principal  function  of 
indicating  actual  quotations  of  what  some  one  else 
has  said,  quotation-marks  may  be  made  to  serve  two 
distinct  purposes.  The  first  is  the  purpose  of  indi- 
cating that  the  writer  has  employed  a  word  or  a 
phrase  that  is  unusual  and  of  showing  that  he  is  per- 
fectly aware  of  the  fact.  The  unusual  word  or  phrase 
may  be  one  that  has  just  come  into  use  and  is  not 
generally  known ;  or  it  may  embody  an  allusion  that 
is  a  bit  abstruse ;  or  it  may  perhaps  be  just  a  bit  un- 
dignified. In  the  first  two  instances  the  quotation- 
marks  mean  that  the  writer  desires  to  avoid  tlic  re- 
sponsibility of  the  quoted  words.  In  llie  flilrd  in- 
stance they  explain  that  he  is  well  aware  that  lu'  Is 
unbending  a  little  too  much,  and  wishes  lo  have  it 
known  that  he  docs  not  usually-  employ  that  sort  of 
diction.  In  all  these  cases  tiiey  convey  a  tacit  ny)ol- 
ogy.  Now  the  literary  amateur  shows  Jn's  ainalcur- 
ishness  by  not  knowing  precisely  what  words  and 
phrases  fall  under  these  several  heads.     If  he  is  the 


294.    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

editor  of  a  country  newspaper,  he  will  write  (with 
quotation-marks)  of  "  the  wee  sma'  hours  "  in  which 
the  surprise  party  given  to  the  village  pastor  termi- 
nated ;  and  he  will  describe  the  local  tavern-keeper  as 
"  our  genial  host."  If  he  is  a  somewhat  less  rudi- 
mentary person,  he  will  perhaps  quote  such  expres- 
sions as  "  survival  of  the  fittest  "  and  "  new  woman  " 
and  "  vingtiemc  siecle,"  and  "  epoch-making."  To 
say  that  a  thing  is  epoch-making  is,  of  course,  en- 
tirely proper;  but  an  experienced  writer  knows  that 
all  cultivated  men  and  women  are  now  perfectly  fa- 
miliar with  this  importation  from  the  German,  and  so 
he  would  not  dream  of  setting  it  off  by  quotation- 
marks,  because  it  is  already  naturalised  in  our  every- 
day vocabulary. 

The  second  use  of  quotation-marks  is  to  convey  a 
sort  of  contempt  when  one  employs  an  expression 
which  is  rather  usual  and  by  amateurs  regarded  as 
allowable,  but  which  the  professional  person  wishes  to 
discredit.  Such  are  the  words  "  brainy,"  "  talented," 
"  locate,"  and  a  host  of  others.  Mr.  E.  L.  Godkin 
was  a  master  of  the  art  of  making  a  current  phrase 
ridiculous  by  this  typographical  device.  Such  polit- 
ical expressions  as  "  point  with  pride,"  "  jamming  it 
through,"  "  visiting  statesmen,"  "  something  equally 
as  good,"  "  leading  citizen  "  and  "  a  friend  to  silver  " 
were  so  pilloried  by  him  in  this  way  that  only  an  ama- 
teur can  now  ever  dream  of  using  them  with  any  seri- 
ous intent. 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  PRINTED  PAGE  295 

A  regard  for  the  principle  of  Fitness  will  take  all 
these  things  into  careful  account  and  will  never  dis- 
miss them  as  being  of  slight  importance.  Side  by 
side  also  with  other  typographical  matters  is  the 
question  of  punctuation,  which  most  writers  unwisely 
leave  wholly  to  the  compositor  and  proof-reader  in 
the  belief  that  punctuation  is  a  purely  mechanical 
and  formal  thing  for  which  there  exist  definite,  rigid 
rules  that  can  be  applied  by  an}'  one.  There  never 
was  a  more  egregious  error.  There  are  rules  for 
punctuation  as  there  are  rules  for  painting  and 
rules  for  elocution ;  but  these  rules  are  for  the  guid- 
ance of  the  ignorant  beginner  in  his  earliest  attempts. 
They  do  not  guide  the  finished  artist  or  the  consum- 
mate orator.  And  so  with  punctuation.  Its  rules 
are  general  rules,  and  at  the  best  are  only  roughly 
true.  The  higher  punctuation  has  an  unrecognised, 
yet  in  its  way  an  important,  share  in  aiding  the  per- 
fect utterance  of  recorded  thought.  It  rests  wholly 
upon  psychological  principles,  since  it  is  a  device  to 
make  the  writer's  meaning  aljsolutely  unmistakable, 
and  hence  it,  too,  is  an  expression  of  his  person- 
ality. 

The  summing  up  of  the  whole  sul)jcct  is  that  tlie 
arrangcmont,  the  typograpliical  system,  and  llw^ 
punctuation  of  the  printed  j)agi',  if  studied  carefully 
and  with  discrimination,  can  do  very  much  for  any 
author.  A  knowledge  f)f  tliein  run  nol  make  the 
fortune  of  a  book  tliat  oiiglit  to  live,  nor  can  it  save 


296    STUDIES    IN    SEVERAL    LITERATURES 

a  book  that  ought  to  die.  But  it  may  secure  for  the 
first  a  quicker  recognition,  and  it  may  sometimes 
preserve  the  latter  from  that  severest  condemnation 
of  the  critic  which  takes  the  form  of  an  impenetrable 
silence. 


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